


The Lengths We Would Go

by Sanctuaria



Series: Codependency is Dangerous for Assassins (good thing that's no longer all we are) [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: AU after The Avengers, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. References, Budapest, Clint Barton Whump, Did I Mention Budapest???, F/M, Implied/Referenced Sexual Abuse, Iron Man 2 tie-in, Natasha Romanoff Whump, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Strike Team Delta, Strike Team Delta Origin Story, The Red Room is evil, What Happened in Budapest, and birth of Lila shenanigans and feels, even if sometimes she would like to be, now including Pizza Dog!, unintentional self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 45
Words: 144,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22082362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanctuaria/pseuds/Sanctuaria
Summary: If one of her teammates went missing, Natasha would do whatever it took to find them.If Clint Barton went missing, Natasha would burn down the world if it refused to give him back.Or, a STRIKE Team Delta Origin Story fic mixed in with Natasha being a one-woman army (plus some allies) trying to find Clint after he goes missing. Set half post-Avengers, half Red Room-era and beyond.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton/Laura Barton, Laura Barton & Natasha Romanov, Natasha Romanov & Bobbi Morse, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov
Series: Codependency is Dangerous for Assassins (good thing that's no longer all we are) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1795762
Comments: 191
Kudos: 131





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been a labor of love for me since 2015 and is finally complete! I'm super excited to begin to share it with you now, and Happy New Year!
> 
> Chapters will alternate with odd chapters set in the present, when Clint goes missing, and even chapters in the past, starting from Natasha's time as the Red Room's premier Black Widow.

Present.  
2012  
Two Months After the Battle of New York.

She was halfway undressed when Tony Stark’s face appeared on her phone, giving her his trademark shit-eating smirk as his glazed, unmoving eyes somehow seemed positioned to stare directly at her chest. Natasha hit the answer button with her forefinger and set it on speakerphone before bending down to scoop her discarded dark crimson blouse off the ground and opening her drawer to find something more comfortable. The yellow light from the small lamp in the corner was just enough to distinguish colors by. “What do you want, Stark?”

“Natasha?” he asked, sounding genuinely surprised on the other end. 

“Tony,” she replied. 

“I was trying to call Steve.”

“I’m not Steve,” she said helpfully, pulling on a blue T-shirt and following it up with a light jacket. 

“So is it still a butt-dial if I was trying to call Cap and JARVIS called you instead, but my phone was still in my pocket?” Stark asked. 

Natasha rolled her eyes. “No, it’s not. But since when does JARVIS get numbers mixed up?”

“Never,” Stark replied. “Unless his brilliant and did I mention philanthropic creator recently did an upgrade to his system and forgot to check the backwards compatibility with the mainframe…which he did.”

Natasha slipped off her shoes and set them in her closet amongst the many other pairs, then picked up her phone and walked out with it into the kitchen. It was dark until she flipped a light on except for the twinkles of buildings and far-below traffic lights that came in through the sliding glass door to the balcony. “So can I hang up on you now?”

“Actually, while I have you, I had a few more questions about Avengers Tower,” he revealed. She nearly rolled her eyes again, taking out a clean glass. Of course he did.

“You mean Stark Tower.”

“But it won’t be, once all—”

“I’m not living as a permanent guest in your multi-million-dollar, experimental-green-energy, controlled-by-an-AI-butler skyrise,” Natasha said flatly, moving to fill her glass at the sink. 

Stark made an indignant noise in his throat. “What part of any of that description makes Avengers Tower seem like a place you wouldn’t want to live?”

“The part where it’s yours,” she said simply. Natasha smiled. “I’ve been under your thumb before, Mr. Stark. I wasn’t a fan. Except for that one time I got to take down Happy in the boxing ring.” She turned off the faucet. 

“You know, he never talks about that,” Tony told her. “But okay, okay. If—hypothetically—you were to come live in my tower, would you want a floor above or below Barton? And would you want me to put in a personal gym like Cap’s so you can punch the crap out of things and cost me a small fortune—which is okay, because I have a large one—in bags, or are your Black Widow skills too advanced for punching bags?”

“Above,” Natasha answered with a smirk. “And you’re never too advanced for a good-old-fashioned punching bag.” She sipped at her water.

“I am,” Stark pointed out. “Just point my repulsor and—pew!” He made his best vocal imitation of something blowing up. 

“Goodbye, Stark,” Natasha said, pulling the phone away from her ear. 

“You know, because _I am Iron Ma_ —” She hit the ‘end call’ button. 

Natasha sighed as she set her phone and the glass down, shrugging her shoulders to get the tension out of them and opening her cupboards. She perused their contents to find nothing but a small bag of flour and half a box of cereal. Not really hungry anyway, she closed them again and looked around her apartment. Restless. 

It wasn’t even that the op Fury had sent her on had been particularly harrowing. Standard, really—infiltrate, nab the guy heading up all the firm’s illegal activities from his office, and ship him off on a one-way trip to the Fridge, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s highest security storage locker for the worst of the worst. And everything had gone as planned. 

But sometimes…sometimes she just needed her partner. 

Natasha straightened, heading for the door to her apartment. She could tell him about Stark’s latest batch of questions, tease him about taking the top bunk—the Hawk always liked the highest vantage point and she knew it. Closing and locking her own door behind her, she padded four steps down the hallway to reach his and grasped the handle, giving the S.H.I.E.L.D. tech fingerprint sensor a few extra milliseconds to establish her identity and detect her heartbeat. The door clicked open. 

“Clint?” she called. “You here? Stark’s at it again, thinks we’re going to be living one above another like rabbits.” Something dark seemed to flit across her vision to her right, but when she looked there was only his coffee pot and dish drainer sitting there like normal. 

Nevertheless, she couldn’t shake the sense of unease, letting the door swung shut quietly behind her as she reached for her thigh holster. Her fingers swiped at empty space next to her leg. Damn. She knew exactly where it was, sitting on her bureau twenty feet away through the apartment wall. 

Another flicker of movement caught her eye outside the window and all thought of her gun left her mind as she sprang forward towards the figure illuminated as the only dark patch in the sea of New York City lights below. She ran to the sliding glass door and burst through it onto the balcony, leaping up onto the wooden chairs instead of taking the time to go around them. The man in black was not Clint, everything about him screamed it—wrong height, wrong build, wrong way of movement as he shot out his arm directly in her path, expecting her to crumple on impact. 

Natasha tucked her body under it, momentum carrying her forward until her feet crashed into the concrete edge of the railing, sending a jolt of pain up her legs. A large foot entered her vision about to smash down on her head but she quickly rolled away, hooking her smarting ankles around his calf and twisting. With a grunt of pain the man dropped to one knee and she flipped herself back onto her feet, wasting no time in planting a kick directly to his temple. His head jerked to the side with whiplash, and she ripped the ski mask off of him. “Where’s Barton?” she demanded. 

The man spit out a globule of blood before looking at her, deep-seated malice in his eyes. “Любовь для детей, Romanova. Кажется, вы забыли,” he growled. Shock infused her, giving him just enough time to launch himself forward, one foot and both hands balanced for a split second on the railing. She threw herself after him and caught hold of his dark jacket just as he plummeted over the edge. For a second it caught, snapping her arm straight and throwing her body against the railing with two poles cold metal biting diagonally across her chest and stomach. Then the fabric ripped with an awful shredding sound, and the man tumbled downward. Screams echoed upwards from below and then a giant crash. Clutching the torn piece of cloth, she could barely make out a mangled body in the cavity of a crushed car roof. The angry blare of the car alarm soon joined the shouts of shock and surprise, but Natasha ignored it all. She sprinted back inside, checking every room of the apartment for blood or a body, any trace of her partner. Nothing. Adrenaline coursed through her body as she went for the phone. She dialed, then held it to her ear, waiting. 

“Fury, tell me you have a location on Barton,” Natasha said as soon as he picked up. 

“I’ll have Hill ping his phone,” Fury said immediately. “What’s the situation, Romanoff?” 

“Just get me a location. Is he at home?” 

“He should be at his apartment,” Fury told her. “Yes, Hill’s trace puts him there right now. Where are you?” 

“Same place. There’s a mess on 5th Avenue that you might want to have some agents clean up,” Natasha said grimly. “Barton’s been taken. Meet me at the Hub in twenty, and I’ll explain everything.” She ended the call, dropping the phone back down on the table with a dull thunk.

_“Love is for children, Romanova. It seems you have forgotten.”_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natalia Romanova completes a mission for the Red Room and participates in a demonstration for Madame B.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the kudos and comments! The goal for this fic will be to update every three days - I already have 100k+ written for it, so hopefully this will be very doable.

Past.  
1985

Forty-five seconds.

She had forty-five seconds to get to her mark. Forty-five seconds before the train whisked him away, before he got lost in the crowds of Volgograd, before _she_ became expendable.

Natalia Romanova had forty-five seconds to kill the man, but she only needed forty-four.

The cold, curved metal in her hand contrasted with the warm humidity of the air enveloping her as she stepped off the stairs onto the platform. Her eyes flicked from her mark to varying points around the station—the clock, the exits, the passerby—but never left him for more than a split second. His brown trenchcoat did not differentiate him much from the masses moving swiftly to and around the metro platform, a near-constant hustle and bustle, but it was just enough. The dank smell of the underground only made her want to complete this mission faster, to get back to the Academy where the air flowed fresh and cold. Where everything was cold.

She lost him for a second behind a gum-speckled pillar but quickly spotted him again on the other side. She sped up, stepping quickly over the uneven concrete and cigarette butts until she was only seven meters behind him…five…three…one. Natalia glanced up at the signs indicating where this particular train was headed and then left at the empty tracks. Her ears detected the approach of a train over the hubbub before the lights were even visible in the tunnel, and the knife slipped back into her waistband with a slight shift of her hand. Twenty-seven seconds.

Her mark slowed to a stop at the safety line in the floor, looking out along the tracks to see his train approaching. The crowd swelled around them as others realized as well, and they gradually pushed forward until she was almost pressed up against him. Twenty-three seconds. She was close enough to see every one of the small, black, wiry hairs at the base of his skull, and she shifted slightly to the right, her gaze traveling downward to his dark gray umbrella. The tip was resting heavily on the concrete, and she quickly kicked it forward with her foot. It fell out of his slack grip, clattering forward just a few dozen centimeters past the safety line. He glanced behind him at her, and she gave him an apologetic smile, blinking twice demurely. His lips curved upwards minutely as he stepped forward and bent to pick it up. Six seconds. Her foot hooked around his left ankle just as his fingers grazed the wet fabric of the umbrella, and she jerked backwards with her leg. Four seconds. He stumbled, teetering for a second before disappearing over the ledge.

One second to spare.

A blast of wind hit her as the train arrived, and a spray of scarlet blood wet its side and sprinkled the edge of the platform. Screams erupted around her and she pretended to stumble backwards in shock. Chaos abounded, with half the people running away from the sight and half running forward in futility, as if there was something they could do.

Natalia Romanova liked chaos. It suited her. She was clinical, and sliced through it like a knife. She knew just how to find the nooks and crannies within any frightened crowd so that she was walking with them, not through them—but still moving faster, getting where she needed to go.

Right now, where she needed to go was up and out.

Following the flow until she was at the turnstiles, the machine happily ate her unused ticket, and she emerged into the watery Russian sunlight up another set of stairs. Then she just kept walking, purposeful strides across the cobblestone, moving in a general direction away from the city center. Glancing down at her hand, she saw that the concealer she’d put on her pinky finger less than three hours ago—when she’d first started tailing her mark, the fourth time in four days—had mostly rubbed off, probably from a combination of the handling of the ticket and the heat of the underground station. _Der’mo._ Natalia quickly put her hand down by her side again; she was a little over a mile away from the metro stop now and nearing her exfil point.

Upon arriving at the tiny intersection between 30th and D streets, she slipped down a grungy side alley. A dark gray sedan was waiting for her, engine idling, and the passenger side window rolled down as she approached. Natalia’s eyes swept the entire alley before she stepped close to the window. “Romanova, Natalia.” The driver unlocked the door for her and she climbed in, keeping her hand surreptitiously out of the view of the driver.

“It’s done?” he growled, a slight Ukrainian accent overlayed over his Russian. She didn’t recognize him, but they often sent people she didn’t recognize.

“ _Da_.” He shifted into drive without another word, pulling out onto the Moscow street. Natalia leaned her head back against the headrest, watching without really watching as he drove. It had been a long time ago that her first teacher drilled into her the importance of always sleeping with one eye open. The habit had served her well this far in the Red Room.

“Change,” the driver ordered gruffly, indicating the back seat without taking his eyes off the road. Natalia looked back there to find a canvas bag with the supplements to her usual black uniform. Unabashed by the man’s presence, she began unbuttoning her blouse, revealing the skin of black leather she wore underneath. With some practiced wriggling she managed to get the skirt off as well, reaching into the back for her boots and black gloves. Next she pulled off the blonde wig she had been wearing and dropped it to the car mat, letting her long, dark red curls spill freely over her neck and shoulders once more.

Wearing a disguise had never made her feel any less the Black Widow, but now she truly looked the part.

It was nearing midday when they arrived. The Academy loomed up in front of her as she got out of the car, stone walls tall and foreboding, protecting the inside and the outside from each other. Natalia took a deep breath as she approached it; years of experience had taught her that it was very different from the relative independence of being on this side of the wall. In the Red Room, eyes were always watching.

Though she had traversed them hundreds of times, the driver led her through a small network of tunnels just below the surface to get inside before depositing her in one of the facility’s empty classrooms on ground level. It was filled with desks all facing a projector screen. As the driver left, she examined the projector’s contents. Layer-Deception _Pinocchio_ , and underneath Instill-Fear _Snow White_ and No-Mercy _Bambi_.

As soon as he was gone Natalia turned her back to the door and gently slid her right glove off again. Her finger was discolored, a mottled red and purple from when she had broken it on a mission two weeks ago. She thought back to her mark at the metro station. Perhaps it had been a bad call to not use her dagger, even given this injury. She’d had barely a second to spare—a tiny margin for error, even for her. But if she had, the kill might have been sloppy, and if there was one thing she—her handler—hated more it was sloppy work. As her first teacher Ivan had said, the Black Widow was a precision instrument, not a butcher’s knife.

“Romanova,” a man said from behind her, and her glove was back in place before she turned to face him. She knew the game, the rules of staying alive. _Comrade Gagolin. Superior. Trainer. Red Room._ “Comrade Vichetsky is ready for you.”

“Understood,” she replied, giving a clipped nod. The man left the room, the clomp of his heavy boots loud against the concrete floor. Natalia flexed her fingers once and strode out, walking purposefully towards the large wooden door with the polished brass knob a hundred yards away at the end of the hall.

Something darted past her at the intersection with another corridor, and Natalia’s left hand flashed out to catch it. A young girl with her blonde hair in a tight braid stared up at her fearfully, guilt written all over her face. Her grey smock and pink ring around the wrist identified her as a Red Room student without question. “ _Idiot devushka,_ ” Natalia reprimanded, anger flashing in her eyes. “Go back to your class. Now!” She released the bruising grip she had on the girl’s arm.

“Yes, Black Widow!” The girl bowed deeply before running off as fast as she could, casting only a frightened glance back behind her.

Eyes now steely in a way they hadn’t been a minute before, she continued on her way. Upon reaching the door she opened it. “Romanova, report,” said the large man behind the ornate desk before she’d even put two feet inside. His girth filled the entire width of his chair and his beady eyes glinted at her from underneath two swathes of eyebrow. _Komandir Vichetsky. Handler. Red Room._

“The operation was a success,” she replied, coming before him and giving him a stiff incline of her head. “The traitor Mirkov has been terminated.”

He leaned forward, and her nose detected a hint of vodka coming off of him. “And the body?”

“What the train didn’t grind to bits is still in the metro station, as you asked,” Natalia replied tonelessly.“Other enemies of the state will know it was more than an accident, but it can’t be traced back here.”

His gaze narrowed. “Can you confirm the kill?”

“I watched the blood stain the concrete.”

“But not the body.” It was no longer a question.

She resisted the urge to shift on her feet. “No.”

“You must always confirm your kills, Romanova,” he reprimanded harshly.

“Yes, _Komandir_.” She kept her gaze directed at the floor, feeling his anger wash over her. He was right, of course. But she had _seen_ the blood. The train. There was no way he could have survived.

“By not doing so you risk failure. Failure shames me, and shames your country. Failure is not allowed, Romanova. You know this.” She did. You completed the objective, or you died trying.

She wished she was outside. Outside, the Black Widow had power, had control, had respect. In here, she had only the power they gave her.

Vichetsky sat back in his chair, eyebrows forming one bushy line as he glared at her. “Injuries sustained?”

“None.” There was definitely no way she could reveal the state of her finger now.

“Good. You continue to render your country a good, if sloppy, service, Romanova,” he told her. “Next time, I expect a confirmation, or there will be consequences.”

“Yes, _Komandir_ ,” she said with another incline of her head.

“You will be leaving again soon. In the meantime, attend to Madame B.”

“Yes, _Komandir_ ,” Natalia said. It would do her no good to ask who or where or when or what this next task might be. She trusted the time and the where and the what to him. They trusted her with the how.

And the Black Widow certainly did not ask the why.

She exited the room with the ache of her smallest finger still coursing up her arm and settling at the base of her skull. The corridor was empty again, but the sounds of sparring and the faintest notes of ballet music were barely audible, coming from both directions. The air was crisp and biting as she stepped outside onto the training grounds, a sure sign winter was coming. Truthfully, after a moment or so she barely noticed the cold. She was used to it.

Scanning her eyes over the grassy field, Natalia pinpointed the woman she was looking for to the south of her current position and began walking briskly her way. The field was located in the center of the Red Room facility with the buildings surrounding it, secluding it from the outside.

The practice-fighting of the group surrounding the woman slowed to a halt as she approached, and every young head took a position staring at the ground. The woman nodded at Natalia, kissing first her right cheek, then her left, and then her right again in greeting. _Madame B. Teacher. Headmistress. Ballet. Red Room._ “Natalia,” she said with a small smile.

“Madame B,” Romanova replied. She knew better than to put any stock into the warmth of the greeting, but it did give her a slight glow inside to hear her given name being used aloud by someone other than herself. Madame B was different than the others. Powerful. Natalia was her star pupil, perhaps even her protégé. But that did not mean any less formality was needed—tolerated—on her part.

“Circle up,” Madame B directed the girls, and they obediently lifted their heads and formed a large oval, each standing about twenty centimeters apart. She pointed to two of them, who stepped forward on either end. The oval closed ranks around them. “Perform well and remember who is watching.”

Each of the girls inclined her head stiffly to the other, and Natalia realized that one of them was the girl she had stopped in the hallway earlier, the one she had caught sneaking about. The hairband holding her braid together was blue, indicating that she, like her comrades surrounding her, was part of Fifth Class—eleven years old. A bit higher than the median age, and about when classmates began to be weeded out not on measures they could not control, but bloodily, on their own merits.

The other girl attacked first, landing a punch to her stomach before her victim attempted to wrench her arm to the side and destabilize her. She was bigger, however, and locked her arm with the girl from the hallway’s. A few tense seconds passed with each struggling for dominance against the other, but eventually she won out and sent her sprawling across the grass. Before the girl from the hallway could get up, she was on her again, landing kick after kick to the girl’s abdomen. Finally she squatted over her and slipped a hand underneath her opponent’s braid and clasped the back of her neck, then looked back at Madame B.

Distaste was the undercurrent running through the back of Natalia’s mind, but nothing in her countenance gave any hint of it.

“Enough,” Madame B said, and the girl immediately got off of her and offered her hand to the one on the ground. With visible effort, the girl from the hallway took it, pulling herself up into a standing position. She dusted off her smock with shaky hands and then retook her place in the oval, not daring to look up.

Madame B turned to Natalia. “A demonstration for the class, if you would.” The circle immediately parted to let her in. The previous winner, after a moment of shock, gazed at her with wariness but also a surprising spark of challenge in her eyes as the Black Widow faced her. The circle backed up to give them a little more room.

Like before, the girl attacked first, a fast jab to the stomach. Smart, thought Romanova, to test her reflexes first, to see what she was dealing with. However, she simply let the jab connect without flinching, taking advantage of the girl’s surprise to knock her off her feet with a swift undercut of her legs. The girl hit the ground hard but immediately rolled away, the circle flowing outward like water to accommodate the move. She was up again within seconds, staring at Natalia with determination. She attacked again as soon as she had caught her breath, and Romanova let her, watching the flurry of underpowered blows more than defending against them. When she saw her opening, she took it—grabbing the girl’s wrist where the cuff mark was and twisting, also kicking out her opposite leg to send her spiraling once more to the ground. Still gripping the girl’s wrist, she wrenched her arm upward into a ninety-degree angle with the earth and kept it there, taut. The girl flailed on the ground for a moment but found the Black Widow completely out of her reach.

As the girl had, Natalia looked at Madame B for direction.

“Break it,” the headmistress said decisively, any trace of warmth now completely gone from her voice. Romanova placed her other hand near the girl’s elbow, ignoring the quiet whimper and tensing of the small body below her. She snapped the bone with ease before releasing it and standing up.

The girl howled, rolling over reflexively and tucking her broken arm into her chest. “Hush,” Madame B ordered sharply, and the ear-piercing sound abruptly stopped, though tears still leaked unbidden out of the girl’s eyes. “You are all dismissed to go to breakfast,” she told the group. “Madame V will be waiting for you.” She regarded the girl on the ground coldly. “You’ll rely on no one but yourself for this. Get up and report to the infirmary. The faster you walk, the sooner you’ll get there.”

Under her watchful eye the group of girls slowly left, a few with uncertain glances back behind them at their classmate on the ground. Madame B gazed at her young pupil dispassionately, kneeling by her head and reaching out a hand, ever so close to brushing her thumb across the girl’s cheek. For a moment the scene was almost affectionate before she turned walked carelessly away from the silently sobbing student on the ground. Natalia followed, falling into step with her. “Thank you for the demonstration, Natalia,” Madame B said. “It’s good to remind them every once in a while what they’re working towards.”

Romanova nodded. “Tell me about her,” she requested.

“Zoya Ogievna, top of Fifth Class,” Madame B told her. “A talented a dancer, much like you, Natalia.”

“What did she do?”

Madame B gave her a patronizing smile. “She failed.”

“Against me. She’s only eleven,” Natalia pointed out, carefully modulating her voice.

“And she was far too secure in her position,” the headmistress replied. “This will be a setback for her. Either she comes out stronger, or not at all.”

“I understand,” Natalia murmured, ducking her head. “The night you locked me out.”

Madame B smiled for real this time. “Precisely. It was the dead of winter. The next morning, when I opened the door and found you still alive, that’s when I knew you could be the one. That’s when I truly began to push you to be the best you could be.”

“What of the other?” Natalia asked, remembering the girl in the hallway. “Why did you choose her to fight Ogievna if you knew she would lose? Is she being selected for termination?”

“Alya Naumenka, and no. She is…a good student.” Natalia gathered that Madame B remained unaware of the girl’s sneaking out. “She has the potential, but she lacks the determination to use it. I hoped that by humiliating her in front of you, she would find the strength in herself to do better.”

“Do I mean that much to them?” Natalia asked quietly. “They all hope to take my place, but I am not the one who chooses.” She paused. “I will be dead.”

“You will have made a noble sacrifice for the cause of Comrade Lenin and Comrade Stalin and General Secretary Chernenko,” Madame B corrected. “But is it not right that they look up to you? They know you as the strong one, the one who has survived. The best.”

Natalia’s lips curved upwards minutely. “Are there any contenders?”

“One. Yelena Belova, Tenth Class. Her graduation ceremony is scheduled for the spring.”

“I would like to observe her sometime,” she said.

“Not today,” Madame B told her. “You should be preparing for your next mission.”

Natalia nodded. “Of course. I’ll return to my room before going to the refectory.”

“Be the new woman we helped you to create, Natalia,” Madame B said. “ _Byt’ luchshim, i nikto ne mozhet byt’ luchshe._ ” Be the best, and no one can be better.

Natalia nodded, internalizing the phrase once more. “I will. I will not fail the Union.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this glimpse into Natasha's past. Next chapter of course returns to the present day, so she can knock some heads together at S.H.I.E.L.D. and get some answers regarding Clint's disappearance. 
> 
> Also, I am moving across the country tomorrow to start an internship that will hopefully lead to a job and am VERY nervous, so any extra support you guys can give will mean the world to me over the next couple days. Please feel free to reach out via kudos/comments if you can - I always love feedback!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha informs Fury about Barton’s kidnapping, and journeys to the Farmhouse to deliver the news to Laura and the kids.

_Barton's missing. Natasha wants answers._

Present.

Natasha may or may not have stolen— _requisitioned_ —a vehicle from the nearest S.H.I.E.L.D. base. She also may or may not have broken— _interpreted loosely_ —about twenty state and federal laws to get there in time. In fact, just about every law regarding the operation of personal motorized transport except one had been shattered— _bent_ —before she arrived: she had worn her seatbelt.

Breaking all those rules, she didn’t have a death wish. She had a _find-her-damn-partner-and-make-sure-he’s-all-right-before-murdering-the-bastards-responsible_ wish. 

Had she been any other agent, the way she screamed up to the curb, practically leaped out of the car, and then left it in the roadway would have gotten her written up and indicted. Blocking emergency pathways, obstructing day-to-day operations, destroying the functionality of this facility… But she was the Black Widow, and no one stopped her. They all could tell from the look in her eyes that she was on the warpath, and they scrambled out of the way as she moved swiftly and steadily up the stairwell, plastering themselves to the railing as she went by. She would have been described as thundering up the stairs of the Hub had her footfalls made any sound at all.

From the unusually gentle tone Fury used to greet her when she walked into his office, he could ascertain as much too. “Romanoff.”

“Have you found any leads on Barton?” she asked immediately. He was standing behind his desk in all his eyepatched glory, with a full black trench coat and all the screens active behind him as well as S.H.I.E.L.D. insignia-stamped papers strewn all over his desk.

“No, but we have two full forensics teams running his apartment through a fine-tooth comb,” Fury informed her.

“Have they found anything?”

“First tell me what you know,” he said.

“Barton’s gone,” Natasha answered. “I got back from Leipzig around nine. Went over to his apartment shortly afterward—” She didn’t need to justify that to Fury; he knew them too well. “—and there was a man in black out on the balcony. He had fighting experience, if not professional training. He said something to me before he jumped off the ledge…I had him but he managed to break my concentration. Words I hadn’t heard come out of anyone’s mouth but my own in a very long time.”

“And they were?” the director asked.

“He said, in Russian, ‘Love is for children, Romanova. It seems you have forgotten.’”

Fury shifted his stance. “That’s not the kind of line I’d forget out of your file, Romanoff.”

A touch of anger colored her features. “It’s not one I’d soon forget either.”

Fury sighed. “The forensics team has just finished their initial sweep, but so far they have nothing except a small smudge of mud on the floor. It could be nothing, or it could be—”

“A sign that he was dragged off,” Natasha nodded. “But no blood, DNA, hair, prints?”

“None so far. But I’ll keep you apprised.”

“Then I have to go,” she said, turning and heading for the door.

“I didn’t tell you you could take point on this, Agent Romanoff,” Fury said sharply from behind her. She spun to face him angrily.

“He’s my partner; I’m going,” she said flatly.

“You’ll follow the regulations until I say otherwise,” Fury told her. “And that means investigating every lead. We don’t know conclusively that the man on the balcony was related to Barton’s disappearance. Hell, we don’t even know if he was kidnapped in the first place.”

“You honestly believe those two things could be a coincidence?” Natasha asked, narrowing her eyes.

“I don’t and you don’t, but I can’t have the agent leading the search for one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s most valuable assets be doing it with a judgment clouded with emotion.”

The door opened behind her and Natasha whirled around, feet and fists automatically finding a fighting position. The agent who had had the misfortune to enter right at that moment took one look at her and scurried out the door again, letting it bang behind him.

“My judgment isn’t clouded,” she growled tightly, standing down again.

“Then prove it,” Fury challenged. “Do the right thing. Contact Laura. I’ll put you in touch with Agent Morse as well, who’s run some recent missions with Hawkeye. Find out if there’s anyone else out there with the means and the will to do something like this.”

“And ignore the lead that’s staring us right in the face?”

“He was alone, and on the balcony. How could he have taken Barton anywhere? There have been no reports of low-flying aircraft anywhere in the vicinity, so they must have taken him out the front door. By your own account he wasn’t exceptionally skilled, and after the kidnapping he would have had to go back into the apartment and onto the balcony where you found him. Why would he do that?”

“I’ll find out,” Natasha growled.

“And just as easily, he could have been looking for you and chosen the wrong balcony. Barton does live in the apartment next to yours,” Fury pointed out.

“The Red Room doesn’t get apartment numbers wrong,” she said darkly.

“Give it twenty-four hours,” Fury said with finality. “By that time both criminalistics and autopsy will be done. If Barton’s still MIA, then I’ll give you the green light to pursue any lead you have in any way you see fit.”

It was the best she was going to get. Though the urge to ditch S.H.I.E.L.D. and take off on her own was strong, she resisted, sliding her phone out of her pocket and preparing to dial Laura’s number.

“It’s not news I would deliver over the phone,” Fury stopped her. “Take a visit to the Farmhouse, Romanoff. Do this the right way.” Natasha paused, then nodded. “I’ll have Agent Morse prepared to debrief you at 0800 via video feed.”

“Understood, sir.” She turned and headed out the door. “Also, never refer to us as _assets_ again.”

* * *

Taking a S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinjet to the Farmhouse was no simple task. First there was filing a bogus flight plan, and then there was remembering the six different codes required to enter stealth mode while in the air. Once she was on her way, she couldn’t just put it in autopilot because the coordinates to Barton’s home were top secret, which meant no inputting them electronically anywhere, ever. And all that paled in comparison with what she would face upon arrival, which was all Natasha was really thinking about anyway. How was she going to tell Laura? Coming and delivering the news with no actual intel, no rationale for the attack… With nothing at all, really. Nothing but an empty promise. _I’ll bring him back to you._

Not to mention Cooper and Lila…

Natasha glanced down at the controls again and realized she had slowed down to three-fourths her desired speed. Gritting her teeth, she pushed the throttle forward, watching as the little dot on the onscreen map inched closer and closer to the destination.

When the trees below the Quinjet began to thin out a bit, she began her descent, flipping the correct controls with her right hand as her left tightened around the throttle. She almost didn’t remember to circle the Farmhouse first but pulled back upwards just in time. The engines strained to regain altitude on the first lap but gave her no trouble during the second and third rounds. Little ritual completed, she lowered the plane gently into the grassy field a couple hundred feet from the house, the American flag on the side of the house flapping madly and dust billowing up around her. She waited for it to clear a bit before unstrapping and lowering the ramp out the back. Two small figures were running towards her at full tilt from the large white house with a larger one following them, and Natasha descended from the Quinjet’s interior to greet them.

“Auntie Nat!” Cooper’s longer legs allowed him to reach her first, his smile wide as he beamed up at her.

“Hey, you,” she hugged him. Behind him Lila tripped and fell into the grass, and Natasha released Cooper and hurried past him to where the girl had fallen. “Lila!”

“‘M okay,” the girl insisted, pushing herself up and brushing off her hands on her pants. Undeterred, she launched herself into Natasha’s arms, hugging her tightly. “You’re here!”

“Auntie Nat, where’s Dad?” Cooper asked. She turned to see him standing on the edge of the Quinjet’s ramp, eyebrows knotted together in confusion. Lila tugged on the sleeve of Natasha’s jacket as Laura joined them.

“Daddy’s not here?” the girl asked, gazing up at her.

Natasha looked over her head at Laura, who seemed to take in her ashen expression, the grim line of her mouth, and the tightness of her gaze. “Kids, go inside for a minute, please,” Laura Barton said.

“No!” Lila shrieked suddenly, attaching herself to Natasha’s leg. “Where’s Daddy?”

Laura extracted Lila from Natasha, holding the girl’s hand and giving her a stern, if pained, glance. She looked at her son. “Cooper, take your sister back inside.”

He shifted on his feet. “But I want to know where Dad is too.”

“Cooper Nicholas Barton, do as I say!” Laura’s eyes flashed, but from this distance Natasha could see that there was an equal amount of fear mixed in with the anger. He jumped off the edge of the ramp and kicked at the grass with his shoe before running over and whispering something in Lila’s ear. She nodded and Laura and Natasha watched them run back to the house together hand in hand. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it?” Laura asked softly once they had disappeared through the open front door.

Natasha nodded. “We don’t know much yet.”

“Clint. He’s…”

“Missing, as far as we know,” she informed her. “But…there’s nothing to say he’s dead, Laura.”

The woman gazed at her tightly, tears brimming behind her eyes. She swallowed. “Then why are you here and not out there searching the world for him, Nat?”

“I’m gathering other leads,” she answered.

“Other leads? So you have one?” Laura asked hopefully.

“I do. A promising one. But Fury’s orders,” Natasha said.

“Damn that man.”

“He’s being thorough,” she found herself defending Fury. She put her hand on Laura’s shoulder. “I’ll do my best to find him, Laura.”

Clint’s wife hugged her. “I know you will.” Natasha waited for Laura to release her before letting go.

“What do you want to tell the kids?” she asked gently. “I won’t say anything you don’t want me to. Whatever you think is best.”

“We always knew this day might come,” Laura said, wiping her eyes and blinking until she looked relatively normal. “How long does Fury have you here for?”

“Just through tomorrow morning, if that’s all right,” Natasha told her. “He wanted us to go through any missions Clint may have discussed with you, see if any of them connect to his disappearance.”

“You’re always welcome here,” Laura reminded her. She looked towards the house. “We tell them the truth, then.” Her voice was steady. “As much as we can.” She began walking towards the house, and Natasha fell into step beside her. “He doesn’t tell me much, you know. It’s all confidential.”

“Whatever you know might help,” Natasha assured her. “Our last few missions—when not with the Avengers—have been apart.”

“It always worries me when you’re not with him out there,” Laura admitted. She gave a wan smile. “Now I know why.”

Cooper and Lila’s faces peeked out from behind the doorframe as they mounted the porch steps. “Mommy, is Daddy coming home soon?” Lila asked.

“Is he okay?” Cooper added, stepping out into the light. Laura and Natasha stepped across the threshold and the kids followed them until they were seated on the couch. Laura pulled over two dining room chairs to sit on so that she and Natasha could face them.

“We don’t know,” Laura said honestly, looking at both of her children. “We don’t know where he is.”

“Did he run away?” Lila asked, tilting her head. “But Daddy loves us, he would never run away, would he?”

“Don’t be stupid, Lil,” her brother said, twisting to face her.

“I’m not being stupid, _Coop_ ,” she made a face.

Anger suffused some of his features. “Dad didn’t run away. Some bad guys took him,” he turned to face the adults again, “didn’t they?”

“Bad guys?” Lila asked fearfully.

Laura pursed her lips. “Cooper, that’s not any way to talk to your sister. And Lila, yes, you’re right—Daddy would never leave us. I’m sure wherever he is, he’s trying really hard to get back to us right now.”

“So people did take him,” Cooper said. He stared accusingly at his mother, as if daring her to try to deny it.

“Yes, someone took him,” Natasha confirmed gently. “But we’re going to do everything we can to get him back, okay?”

“Promise?” Lila asked, lower lip trembling. Tears began their silent descent down her cheeks.

“Promise,” Natasha told her. She looked over at Cooper. “I promise you too.”

“What can I do to help?” the boy asked seriously, rubbing furiously at his eyes. They were red-rimmed when he stopped, but besides the faint sheen of wetness on his face there were no tears in his eyes.

Natasha shook her head. “Cooper, you’re only nine…”

“Let me,” Laura said softly, and Natasha was aware of the woman’s hand resting gently but fleetingly on her knee. “Cooper, you know what your dad would want you to do while he’s gone?”

“Take care of the house?” he guessed, looking entirely unenthusiastic about it. “Help you, take care of Lila? But I don’t want to. I want to be helping find him.” Laura opened her mouth to say something else but then stopped as Cooper steam-rollered right over her. “I learned my times tables in math really good now, and I can read all sorts of things. I can…I can read those secret documents Dad brings home sometimes, or I can…help watch video feeds or whatever it is you need me to do.” He turned his gaze away from his mother, and she found herself staring directly into his young hazel eyes. “Please Auntie Nat, let me help.”

“Me too,” Lila added, scooting closer to her brother.

Natasha smiled. “There is something you can do to help me.”

“What is it?” Lila asked.

“Anything,” Cooper said.

“Nat,” Laura warned.

“It’s nothing dangerous, but it is very important,” Natasha told them. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small device with a rounded top and inset with a small light bulb, like those used on Christmas trees. “I need you to keep an eye on this for me.”

“How does that help?” Cooper asked, a bit of challenge present in his voice, as if he expected her to try to trick them.

“Your dad and I have known each other for years,” she said. “We have systems of communicating with each other if something like this ever happens. He has the other one of these, and there’s a button on his that makes mine light up. But I can’t watch it all the time while I’m out searching for him, so I need two trustworthy and diligent people to do it.” Natasha looked at them both seriously. “Can I trust you with this?”

“Yes,” Cooper said solemnly.

“You can take turns,” Laura said, glancing gratefully at Natasha.

“We’ll do it,” Lila said equally seriously. Natasha gently handed over the device to Cooper, watching how carefully he took it and held it in his small hands.

“Daddy’s in danger, isn’t he?” Lila asked softly. “He might not come home.”

Laura looked startled but reached her arms out to her youngest, who launched herself into them gratefully. “We can’t think like that. He wouldn’t want us to give up.”

“I’ll never give up,” Cooper said obstinately.

“Me either,” came his sister’s muffled voice, wet spots beginning to appear on her mother’s shirt. Natasha stood up and moved over to the couch, sitting down next to Cooper, who was still staring transfixed at the device in his hands.

“ _We_ will never give up,” she told him, putting an arm around his shoulders. “Not me, not your mom: none of us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading :) Please let me know what you thought!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natalia receives a new assignment, but first must once again undergo 'treatment.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all of your kudos and comments; they brighten up my day every single time :)

_After completing an assassination in Moscow for the Red Room, their Black Widow Natalia Romanova returned to the Academy and participated in a combat demonstration against one of the younger students. It ended with Natalia breaking the girl’s arm under Madame B’s direction._

Past.

Her pinky finger was broken. It was only in the quiet solitude of her room that she could admit it, and it was the act of admitting it that brought the pain back. Her teeth clenched together as she gingerly pulled off the black leather gloves that completed her Black Widow uniform, setting them down in one of the drawers of her small bureau. It was just about the only piece of furniture in the room besides the bed. Red Room living arrangements were spartan, and it was only because she held the title of Black Widow that she did not have to share in the communal bathrooms any longer. Above the sink was a small, rectangular mirror—another forbidden item for girls training in the facility. Individuals and identity were not prized, only independence and service.

Natalia crossed over to the bed and pulled it outwards, a difficult feat with her pinky twinging with every movement of her left hand. The bed was solid, made of some sort of dense wood with thick covers for cold Russian winters, which made it the perfect hiding place. At the head of it, which had been up against the wall before, was a cut-out carved meticulously by Natalia herself over the course of many months. She felt around inside of it and produced a small tube of cream-colored paste. She applied it to her pinky with gentle fingers, masking the red-purple hue. Then she placed the tube carefully back inside, hand brushing against a soft piece of torn fabric as she did so.

She stuffed the fabric deeper inside the little hole, the silken feeling lingering on her skin.

She stood in front of the mirror, taking stock of her appearance as she often did after completion of an assignment. Not that one additional kill added to her ledger ever made a noticeable difference in the woman who stared back at her… Not since her first.

Natalia examined herself. Leaving all her knowledge about herself behind, she would judge her face to be about eighteen or nineteen, but then again she’d always looked a bit young for her age. Even when she was a child—it had served her well in the Academy against the other girls in the beginning, though they’d soon learned to be wary of her. Only her eyes reflected her true age, or perhaps something much older in their depths. She recognized it for what it was; it was one aspect of her training that the Red Room had never hidden from her. The complete loss of innocence.

But no matter. Regardless of what she had lost, she had gained far more at the Room. Purpose. Skills. Efficiency. Education. A sense of identity. They had taken in the orphan of the Cold War who might have starved on the streets or become a victim of human trafficking, and fashioned her into something greater than herself. Natalia knew she had much to be grateful for.

Exiting her room, she walked briskly across the field to the refectory, collecting her watery potato soup and thick slice of bread and then selecting a large table in the center at which to sit. Though a few more Red Room students trickled in, they all avoided her table with downward gazes. She liked to eat alone, and they all knew it. In fact, there were many things she preferred to do alone.

Except… No more than two bites in she could feel a burning, hateful gaze on the back of her neck coming from one of the other tables. Despite the prickling sensation and elevated heart rate it—or any such unsolicited surveillance—caused, the Black Widow waited until the rapidly-cooling soup was finished before turning to confront the girl. A stinging reprimand was sharp and ready on her tongue—the girl’s arm was nothing compared to what would come later as a graduate of the Red Room Academy, and she had no right to object to Natalia’s breaking of it. She should be grateful for the lesson.

The words died in her mouth as her gaze connected with that of her accuser. It wasn’t Ogievna. _Alya Naumenka. Student. Fifth Class. Potential. Red Room._ The girl held her head high for a moment more before getting up from her table and disappearing into the hallway behind her. “Romanova!” Her thoughts were interrupted by her handler stomping toward her from the other direction in large, heavy boots. “You are needed.”

“Yes, _Komandir_ ,” she nodded, standing up from the table. Her eyes fell on the largely uneaten bread almost regretfully, but she turned away and headed back to the office with her handler. Food was not to be taken outside of the refectory. In her younger years she might have stolen it anyway, but she knew better now. She _was_ better.

Once they were in his office, her handler slid a packet of papers towards her. “You’ll be going to Vatican City this time. Assassination of an enemy of the Soviet Union.”

“The Pope?” Natalia asked, her mind already beginning to plot the possibilities.

“Nothing quite so spectacular,” Vichetsky told her. “The Vatican is set to send a priest on a missionary trip to Czechoslovakia. General Secretary Chernenko does not want there to be any further Western influence allowed into the Soviet area. You are to carry that message.”

“How will I get in? The Vatican is not without security.”

“Through the front doors,” he replied. “Same way you’ll get out.”

“Preferred method of dispatch?”

“There are no specific parameters,” Vichetsky said. “He’s scheduled for a shift in the confessionals tomorrow afternoon.” Natalia nodded, understanding the choice. It was private and would give her time to gain some distance before the body was found. “Your flight will arrive at 15:15 and take off at 18:45, giving you three and a half hours to get in, get it done, and make it back to the airport.”

She opened the packet in front of her. The first piece was a map of Rome and the interior of Vatican City. “How’s the traffic in Rome?”

“Abysmal,” Vichetsky grunted.

Sifting through the rest of the papers—schedules, security procedures, personnel files—she looked up at him with a frown. “Where’s the photograph?”

“He will be behind a screen when you make first contact,” her handler replied. “You will have to identify him by voice.” He opened up one of his desk drawers and took out a small voice recorder. “We do have an image but it is from several years previously, and is only to be used for confirmation purposes.” He hit play on the recorder, and the impassioned voice in Italian filled the room. She listened intently for content and then for vocal incongruencies that might help her identify him. Vichetsky shut it off after only one time through, handing it to her. “Listen to it more on the plane so that you will know his voice as well as you know mine.” He then removed an old newspaper from inside his desk and laid it flat, facing her. One thick finger pointed to the picture just below the headline.

“That’s him?” Natalia asked unnecessarily, leaning down to get a better look. The man was young in the photograph, but the date on the paper indicated it was from 1979.

Vichetsky grunted theaffirmative. “We also want you to speak English while you are there. Disguise as a tourist.”

She nodded, accepting it. “British or American?”

“American,” he replied. “The most important of all the languages we have taught you, Romanova. That of our greatest enemy.” He checked his watch.

“Is that all?” Natalia asked, nearly interrupted by a knock at the door.

“ _Voyti_ ,” Vichetsky called. Madame B came in.

“Romanova has a new mission?” she asked him, standing next to her in front of the desk.

“ _Da_.”

“She is scheduled for her treatment. Is there time beforehand?” Madame B requested. Immediately fear crept into her heart at the dreaded word, icy tendrils of cold that chilled her to the bone. A second later it was squashed. Black Widows showed no fear. _Had_ no fear. This was merely apprehen—acceptance. _Accept. Submit. Obey._

If either of them had sensed her momentary disquiet, neither showed it. Vichetsky ran his fingers over his mustache, considering the proposition. “If you begin right away.” He addressed her. “You will be able to recover overnight, Romanova?”

She dipped her head. “Yes, _Komandir_.”

He waved them both off with his hand. “Go then.”

Natalia obediently followed Madame B out of his office and out onto the grounds, neither of them saying anything more. The air pricked at her skin as they traversed the training field, and she resisted the urge to cross her arms. Madame B slipped a tiny key out of her pocket to unlock the door on the other side and then held it open for Natalia. The room she entered was small, cylindrical, with only another door on the opposite wall. The headmistress pressed a small indentation next to it and it slid open slowly, admitting them into the small elevator. The contraption began moving creakily downward as soon as they stepped inside, and Natalia waited with nervous tension for the coming ordeal.

The ride took nearly three minutes, but she had no way of knowing how far down they had gone. Underneath the Red Room facility was an entire labyrinth of tunnels manned by doctors—if one could call them that—in white lab coats. It was where the treatments were administered, as well as the silent terminations carried out.

When the door slid open, the men in white coats were waiting for her, a gurney between them. “Up you get,” Madame B said, patting the metal rim. Without hesitation Natalia stepped forward, hoisting herself onto the padded portion. She gave one last look to Madame B before laying back and staring up at the ceiling, the bright lights searing her retinas. Multiple pairs of gloved hands took hold of her wrists and ankles, tying restraints around them. Her teacher kept up with them as they began to push her down the hallway: left, left, left, right, left. Finally the gurney ceased movement as they reached the treatment room. Madame B leaned over as they inserted the needles into her forearms, calves, and abdomen, tiny pinpricks that she barely registered. “Remember you are like a phoenix, Natalia. The fire must burn so that you may rise from the ashes.” The woman moved away, out of her line of sight. “Proceed with the treatment. A full dose.”

“Starting the drip,” one of the men said. For a moment, Natalia felt nothing. She could almost convince herself the pain wouldn’t come, that her brain had played tricks on her last time, that perhaps they had perfected Ivan’s formu—

Her body reflexively pulled into itself, millions of tiny ants digging and burrowing across the surface of her skin. Underneath, her muscles liquified and burned. Her eyes squeezed shut only to feel as if they were boiling under her lids. Tastebuds went on overdrive until she was experiencing all five at once, bitterly salty and sourly sweet, overrun with a spiciness that would have had her howling for water if she’d been able to make any sound at all through the clenching of her jaw; she half expected her very teeth to shatter from the force of it. Lashing pain erupted about her wrists and feet, markedly different from all else she was experiencing, and vaguely she knew her body was writhing, thrashing against the restraints and well beyond her control. All she could do was pray for the end, even though she was not allowed to pray, but she thought she might have, once upon a time, to a deity whose name she knew not and had no right to say…she could not remember.

Lastly a roar filled her ears, and then everything went silent.

* * *

A fuzzy gray blanket was draped over her ears and eyes, making it impossible to see or hear as she slowly wakened from her sleep-state. Her head pounded, but everywhere else her body thrummed with energy, like an everywhere-itch she couldn’t scratch. As her vision began to waver and clear, she realized there was no blanket after all—her senses just hadn’t recovered yet. A moment later a cream-colored blob appeared in her line of sight, obscuring an emerging whiteness that she assumed must be the bright lights from before. The blob slowly began to regain more features—blonde hair, eyes, a mouth that was already moving though Natalia still could hear no sound. The woman’s head disappeared again from her vision, and she felt the cuff around her left wrist being taken off. She reached up jerkily with her now free hand to touch her ear, concern for her lack of hearing ability beginning to overcome the fog swamping her brain. But no, it was coming back, slowly—there was a voice, female, still indiscernible but definitely there, and growing stronger. Her sight was clearing up too, and Natalia let her hand fall back to her side, content to simply gaze up at the ceiling and wait.

This was familiar now, the post-treatment haze, when her mind had recovered but her body not. The worst was over, and soon she would be outside the Red Room again on mission. Rome this time, the Eternal City. A city she’d heard much of but never get visited, one for which there were more maps to memorize and more language to decipher. She’d be keeping three straight on this op—thinking in her native Russian, speaking in the Americans’ English, and interacting with the Italian street signs and interpreting the general chatter. But at least she’d be outside.

The Red Room Academy was familiar; she would even go so far as to say she was comfortable here. But it was small, and for a woman of Natalia Romanova’s talents, doubly so. She had been trained, prepared, _treated_ for the outside world…she would not deny she liked stretching her legs in it.

All of a sudden, the restraint that had been undone on her right wrist tightened inexorably, and the next thing she knew her left was strapped down as well and white lab coats with faces attached surrounded her again, talking in loud, agitated voices, some of which she could make out. Barely. “Can’t shut us down!” one of them shouted.

“…kill us all,” another agreed.

“Gorbachev…without his approval…”

“A new Russia!”

“Enough!” Madame B ordered. They all stopped to look at her, causing her voice to quiet so much that Natalia could no longer hear it. Her eyesight was improving as well, though, and she thought she might have read the words “preserve” and “soldier” off of Madame B’s fast moving lips. Then she was being carted away again, long white lights flashing above her as the doctors ran, further than they had ever gone before in Natalia’s potentially-skewed judgment. Their conversation grew to be a constant babble around her, coming in waves of increasing and decreasing volume, but jumbled so as to make comprehension impossible.

The room to which they finally brought her was strange, stranger than any of the others she had seen down here in the tunnels, though she could not put her finger on why in her muddled state. The walls were grayer than the white-wash to which she was accustomed. She lifted her head to get a better look, or even to ask what was going on, though her tongue still felt large and unwieldy in her mouth, and caught glimpse of a man in the wall. A man in the wall behind what appeared to be blue-tinted glass. Then her head was forcibly shoved down again by a swift hand on her jugular and she felt a needle pierce the skin of her left arm. A coldness seeped in, then the feeling of being the heaviest object in the world, and black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and the hints for the future begin to be laid...


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha spends the night on the Farm and is surprised by a familiar face in the morning.

_Natasha traveled to the Barton farmhouse to inform his family of his disappearance. They trust her to get him back._

Present.

Natasha twisted in the bed, flipping over onto her other side. She blinked in the slight green glow of the digital clock, watching as the numbers shifted from 2:01 to 2:02 AM. She let out a deep breath, gazing at it blankly. She should have known she wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight, not with all the missions running through her head.

She and Laura had talked long past the kids’ bedtimes, going into and through and over all the recent ops Clint had ever mentioned to his wife, even in passing, and now her mind was whirling too much to relax. Possibilities were running rampant; the urge to just get out there and go was strong…

A creak caught her attention and she reflexively reached under her pillow, only to find nothing but bare sheet. Right. The Barton farmhouse was the one place she didn’t sleep with a gun under her pillow, and she was starting to regret that now.

“Auntie Nat?” came the small whisper. Lila peeked her head in past the slightly ajar door. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah, I’m awake,” Natasha answered, sitting up in bed. “C’mere. What’s wrong?”

The girl gratefully clamored up onto the bed and stuck her feet under the covers. She faced Natasha, looking down. “I had a nightmare.”

“I’m sorry,” she said gently, beginning to stroke the girl’s hair. “What was it about?”

“A bad man told Daddy he could ever come home like in _The Lion King_ and then he pushed Daddy off a cliff like Mufasa,” Lila sniffled. Her voice rose beyond a whisper, nearing hysteria. “I’m scared; I want Daddy to come home!”

“Shh,” Natasha said, putting her hands underneath Lila’s jaw and lifting upwards so that the girl would look at her. “I know you’re scared, and it’s okay to be scared. Want to know a secret?” She kissed the child’s forehead. “I’m scared too.”

“But you’re a superhero,” Lila told her, gazing imploringly up at her. “You don’t get scared. You fight bad guys and you beat them.”

“It doesn’t mean I’m not scared sometimes,” Natasha said softly.

“But you can’t be scared when you save the world,” the girl said earnestly. “Right now you have to not be scared so you can go save my daddy.”

“Why do you think I can’t be scared while I’m saving the world?” she asked.

“Because when I’m scared I can’t do anything,” Lila revealed. “It makes my tummy feel bad and I just want to run away.”

“Being scared doesn’t mean you can’t be brave,” Natasha told her gently. “When I was a little older than Cooper, I was very scared, and I ran away too. But after I met your dad, he showed me I didn’t have to be just scared anymore: I could be brave at the same time.”

Lila pressed her face into Natasha’s shirt. “I wish he was here so he could teach me how to be brave like you.”

Natasha gave her a small smile. “You don’t need to learn it, Lila, you already are. Do you know what your dad tells me about you when we’re out working together?”

“No,” the girl said, pulling away. “What?”

“That you are his brave little girl,” Natasha said. “But you know what he also says? He says you don’t get that bravery from him, you get it from your mom. Because both of you are even more brave than he is.”

“But Daddy’s a superhero,” Lila said in a small voice. “I can’t be braver than him…can I?”

“You are,” Natasha assured her. “Because you’re waiting for him to come home, and the waiting…the waiting’s much harder than anything we do out there.”

Lila snuggled into her side. “You’re gonna bring him home, right?”

“Right,” Natasha whispered. “But for now he needs you to be his brave little girl. Can you do that?”

Lila nodded. “Can I sleep in here with you tonight?”

“Of course,” Natasha said, pulling up the covers so that the girl could slide in. She felt the warm little body curl into hers as her head settled back down onto the pillow. “Good night, Lila.”

“Goodnight, Auntie Nat.”

* * *

“Natasha!” Laura’s panicked voice woke her from sleep. “Natasha!”

“What’s going on?” she demanded, sitting bolt upright in bed as Laura pushed the door open fully.

“Mommy?” Lila asked, poking her head up from under the covers and looking dangerously close to tears with fright.

“Lila, stay in bed,” Laura ordered harshly. “Nat, your gun—” She could see that Clint’s wife had already armed herself with a semi-automatic. “—I hear jets!” Natasha’s gaze immediately lifted upward towards the ceiling, her ears picking up the low whistle of more aircraft on the way. She pulled open the drawer of the nightstand, removing her own weapon from the safe inside it and cocking it deftly.

She nodded with her head in the direction of the front door. “You take left, I’ll get right.” They moved silently into position, Natasha risking a movement of one of the curtains to apprise herself of the situation.

“Mommy, Auntie Nat, what’s going on?” Lila cried plaintively from the bedroom.

Cooper appeared on the stairs, one hand on the banister and the other rubbing his eyes. “Yeah, what’s—” Natasha motioned sharply at him with her hand, and he turned and fled back up the stairs again.

“It’s a Quinjet,” Laura whispered from the front. “Are you sure you weren’t bringing anyone with you, Nat?”

“Very sure,” she growled, shifting the curtain aside to look out again. The ramp of the Quinjet was descending, and the hand holding her gun tightened. A figure with blonde hair stepped out of it, walking purposefully towards them with two metal sticks attached to her back glinting in the early morning sunlight. Natasha would recognize those weapons, that hair, and that tac suit anywhere. “It’s Bobbi,” she said, releasing the tension in her gun and stuffing it in her waistband.

“Bobbi? But what’s she doing here?” A touch of hope crossed Laura’s face as she too lowered her weapon. “Have they figured out where he is?”

“Fury would have called,” Natasha said. “This is…not normal.” There was a hard rapping knock on the door, and Laura opened it.

“We weren’t supposed to talk until eight,” Natasha accused her fellow S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in lieu of a greeting. “What are you doing here?”

“Hey, Laura, Natasha,” Bobbi greeted them. She looked at the Black Widow. “I’m here for the extraction.”

“Aunt Bobbi?” Cooper snuck down the stairs again.

Agent Morse’s face broke into a wide smile. “Hey, champ!” He ran down and hugged her.

Lila appeared a second later. “Did you bring Daddy home?”

Bobbi knelt down until she was at her level. “Sorry, sweetie, no, but we’re going to try really hard to do that, okay? Right now I need to talk to your mom and Natasha though, so can you and your brother go upstairs for a few minutes?” Lila nodded, grabbing Cooper’s hand and dragging him with her.

Once the two of them had disappeared onto the upper floor, Laura addressed Bobbi, gaze questioning but guarded. “Whose extraction?”

“Yours. You, Lila, and Cooper,” Bobbi clarified.

“Why?” Laura asked. She looked around, alarmed. “Have we been compromised?”

“Fury thinks it’s a good idea,” Bobbi said, and if Natasha could read her correctly it had a hint of evasiveness to it.

“I won’t uproot my children who are already terrified out of their minds right now based on Fury’s opinion,” Laura said coldly. “This is our home; the only home they’ve ever known. Five people in all of S.H.I.E.L.D. know about this place: Clint, you, Natasha, Maria Hill, and Fury himself. If it’s compromised, I want to know how.”

“There’s no concrete evidence,” Bobbi told her gently. “He’s just advising it as a precaution. And I…I happen to agree with him in this case.” If anything, Bobbi’s recommendation seemed to further spur Laura into rejecting the idea.

“If the only possible leak is Clint, then it’s not a leak at all,” Laura said, looking at Bobbi with a hardness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. “My husband would never give up our location to anyone; we’re safe here. If we go with you, there would be flight logs, resource consumption, another base—a paper trail.” She paused, seeming to gather strength. “Thank you, but we decline the extraction, Bobbi.”

“Nobody is suggesting that Clint will say anything; he’d never do that,” Bobbi told her. “I just feel it’s the most logical option. Whoever did this was organized and sophisticated enough to take him, after all.”

“I understand that,” Laura said. “But Fury’s promise to Clint when he first joined was that his home would be completely off the record—that we would be. Clint trusts Fury, so I do too. We’ll stay.”

Agent Morse stared at her a moment, then dipped her head. “All right, I’ll inform Fury of your decision.” She turned to her. “Natasha, I have the results of the investigation.” She paused, glancing sideways at Clint’s wife.

“If it’s about my husband, anything you have to say you can say in front of me,” Laura said with a hint of hostility. “I want to hear it. No matter…how bad it might be.”

“It’s not like that,” Bobbi assured her. Natasha waited impatiently for Bobbi’s intel; The sooner she got this information out of Bobbi, the sooner she would be one step closer to finding Clint and bringing him safely home. “Forensics came up with nothing but autopsy had better luck.” She faced her directly. “You were right, Tasha.” The Black Widow’s heart began to race in her chest. “The M.E. couldn’t ID the man who attacked you—no wallet on him, no hits for prints or facial rec—but region-specific markers in his DNA say that he’s full-blooded Russian, just like you said. He didn’t have a wallet, but he did have a phone—mostly clean except for a series of texts from a blocked number in some sort of code. The techs are running it through every algorithm they know as fast as they can, but—”

“Do you have it on you?” Natasha asked. Bobbi nodded and tapped several times on the screen of her phone before handing it over. Holding it out so that Laura could see as well, she thumbed through it. “See anything you recognize?” she murmured.

Laura shook her head. “No.”

“Me neither,” she admitted, handing the phone back to Bobbi. “Send this to me, though. And the official lab reports.”

“Already did,” the agent nodded. Natasha’s hand reached into her pocket in confusion to see why it hadn’t made a sound before realizing her phone was still back in the bedroom. “One of the analysts noticed that ‘EORCB002’ bit was repeated over and over again, so they’re also running it with that bit meaning ‘Barton.’ Should get us results faster if he’s right. It was a good guess.”

“Is that all?” Natasha asked.

Bobbi nodded. “They also noted some GSR—gunshot residue—on his clothing, but that’s all. It’s not much to go on, I know—”

“It’s enough,” she interrupted.

Bobbi nodded. “I’ll be taking off then. Fury has me working Barton’s case in-house, so I’ll keep you apprised of any new developments. He says you have a green light to do whatever necessary, Tasha…and he wants you to bring in the Avengers.”

“Tell Fury I’ll think about it,” Natasha answered. “I want to investigate this some myself first, before I bring in the cavalry.”

“They could help,” Bobbi said.

“They’re untested,” she countered. “We held onto New York by the skin of our teeth and a whole wagonful of luck, and the few missions we’ve been on since have been child’s play.”

Bobbi shrugged. “I’m just repeating what the man with the eyepatch told me to say. I’ll give him your response, Natasha.” She gave a wry smile. “He always loves your replies so much. Maybe that’s why he sends me as his proxy, to spare his yelling voice a little.”

“Maybe,” Natasha agreed.

“Good luck, Natasha,” Bobbi told her.

“You too,” she replied.

Agent Morse turned to Laura. “We’ll do everything possible at S.H.I.E.L.D., I promise. From Fury.” She handed her a slip of paper.

“Thank you,” Laura responded, hand closing over it. Bobbi nodded one last time and headed back to her Quinjet.

“Get the kids; I’ll get ready to go,” Natasha said quietly before walking back to the bedroom. She changed quickly into the civilian outfit she had picked out for touching down in Russia and slipped her gun back into her thigh holster. The rest of her arsenal was back in the Quinjet. she took one last look around the room—her room, the one she always stayed in while she was here—taking in the light blue quilted blankets and simple oak dresser.

Cooper and Lila ambushed her outside the door, Lila clinging to her leg as soon as it was within reach and Cooper throwing his arms around her waist. She hugged him back, whispering, “Be strong.” She lifted Lila up onto her hip and pressed her lips into the girl’s auburn hair. “Be brave.” After releasing both kids, she hugged Laura. “I’ll do my best,” she said softly.

Laura smiled—tiredly, sadly, resignedly, but smiled all the same—at her. “I know you will, Nat.”

She took off in a brisk walk to the Quinjet as the front door shut behind her. Up in the air, she called in her new flight plan. The Farmhouse grew shrank smaller and smaller below her, until it was just a speck in a field of green. She was on her way. On her way to make the person responsible for their pain _pay_.

Because that was what she did. And they should know better than to mess with the Black Widow.

“You know he would never let you go alone,” a soft voice said. Natasha spin around, rising from her seat and pulling a knife from her boot. Bobbi was standing in the center aisle of the Quinjet, looking vaguely apologetic but resigned. She met Natasha’s eyes squarely.

“You said you were leaving,” Natasha said in a clipped voice. “Running the investigation back at S.H.I.E.L.D.” Her knife disappeared back into her boot.

“As if I’ve ever been one for working at a desk all day,” Bobbi replied, sinking down into the copilot’s seat. Shooting her a glance, Natasha flipped a few controls that would take them back down again.

Bobbi’s hand over hers stilled her movements. “It’s orders, Tasha.”

“Screw the orders. Barton’s missing. I’m going to find him.”

“Can you honestly say I wouldn’t be any help with that?” Bobbi asked. “I won’t hold you back. I want him back as much as you do.”

“I highly doubt that,” Natasha growled.

“I was his partner too once.”

She stared angrily in front of her, fingers gripping the steering mechanism tightly. “This was your plan all along, wasn’t it?”

“Fury’s plan,” Bobbi cut in.

“To come with me. You knew going in Laura would never agree to leave the Farmhouse. You left the Quinjet there for their protection. A way to escape if anything did happen.”

“It was a scenario Fury and I discussed,” Bobbi admitted carefully. “At length.” She paused. “He didn’t want to risk this mission being affected by your feelings. He wanted me to be the clear-headed one, so that you can do what you need to do to get him home.”

“You, completely unaffected by emotions?” Natasha scoffed. “Two words for you, Morse: Lance. Hunter.”

Bobbi shot her a look. “That’s different and you know it. My ex-husband…my relationship with him is nothing like mine with Clint. No matter what Hunter would have you believe,” she added coldly.

The tiniest hint of a smirk tugged at the corner of Natasha’s mouth. “I would hope not. Seeing as Clint’s married.”

Bobbi smiled, seeming glad to have been able to pull something out of Natasha other than mission-talk. “We can find him together, Tasha.”

She was silent, flipping switches back into their proper positions. “Just stay out of my way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants to yell with me about the new Black Widow trailer, please hit me up in the comments :) 
> 
> Also, would love any and all opinions on the chapter!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha wakes up to find herself in a different time.

_Natalia was about to be sent on her next mission to Vatican City when Madame B announced she was due for another ‘treatment.’ She was taken to the tunnels underneath the Red Room facility, where the scientists administered it. However, just as she was waking up, something went wrong and they put her under again. This time feels different._

Past.

Numb. Cold. Disoriented. Blaring white lights above her head. Immobility, both physically and mentally. Her entire body tingling as if she was just waking up, a strange sense of déjà vu, and a face swimming before her eyes.

It took her a second to realize the face was real, and not just in her imagination. His hand roved over her hers, six inches from actual skin-to-skin contact. But no—not a hand. Something wiry and metal, something that whirred, but with…fingers. She blinked, and the face seemed to take that as a sign of life because all of a sudden a real hand—warm, human—was gripping down on her forearm, squeezing it to the point of pain brought on by manic intensity. “Who are you?” the man demanded, his voice low and gruff from disuse. If possible, his grip tightened and he leaned in closer. Shaggy brown hair framed his giant face, with sunken, haunted eyes. “Who am I?”

“ _Soldat!_ ” a man shouted from behind her, and all of a sudden three of them in white lab coats were on top of the odd stranger. He staggered backwards, managing to throw one of the men off before he other two slammed him into the wall while she watched helplessly. She didn’t even know if she _wanted_ to help. “Тоска, ржавые, семнадцать, рассвело…” he shouted randomly into the air. Natasha’s muddled brain couldn’t comprehend the garbled meaning of the words strung together. Longing. Rusted. Seventeen. Daybreak.

One of the men in lab coats inserted a needle into the side of the man’s neck, and it took only a few more seconds before his body went limp. The man from behind her stopped shouting random words. Then they dragged him from the room.

More men came in from the opposite door and began attending to her, cold discs on her chest listening to her heart and lungs and a strip of plastic placed across her forehead. “Has she recovered from the thawing?” a woman asked, and she strained her neck to see her. Brunette in a dark blue suit. Clipboard. Thin line for a mouth.

“Yes, ma’am, but we still wouldn’t recommend…”

“I know what you recommend,” the woman snapped. “Just do as I say. She can handle it. She was strong, the best. The drug has been administered?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the man said. She felt the portion of the table beneath her slowly beginning to rise, pushing her into a sitting position. The men began to file out of the room with the woman following them.

“What’s going on?” she forced out, finding that her voice was as scratchy as the strange man’s had been. The door merely closed behind them with a click.

“What’s your name?” the woman’s voice asked suddenly. Her head whipped around, but there was no one there. Besides her, the room was empty. When she didn’t answer, the disembodied voice grew stricter. “Comrade, what’s your name?”

Her mouth opened to reply but she found she couldn’t. The answer was somewhere in her groggy mind, but she couldn’t…it was on the tip of her tongue. “Nat…Natalia,” she ground out, feeling a flood of relief at remembering. “Romanova.”

“Incorrect,” the woman said. There was an odd grating sound from somewhere above her, and then utter cold was rushing over her entire body. She was soaked in icy water and shivering in the chair, gasping for air. “Your name is Natasha Romanoff.”

“But I’m…” Natalia whispered, looking to the ceiling. It was as good a place as any to address this woman. She saw it coming this time, the panel sliding open to let the icy water out. It didn’t make the shock any less.

“What’s your name?” the woman asked again.

“Natasha Romanoff,” she said, desperate not to get soaked again.

“Good. It’s nice to see you again, Natasha,” the woman said warmly. “As you know, I’m Madame B.” Natasha found herself nodding; she did know that. Who else would this woman be? “What year is it, Natasha?”

She thought about it carefully. “1985.” Icy water splashed over her, chilling her to the bone. Looking down she could see she wore no clothes except those needed for the barest modesty, nothing to keep her warm. It occurred to her that was the point.

“Incorrect again. The year is 2000.” More than her name, that shocked Natal—Natasha. Her head jerked upwards to stare at the ceiling. How could she be wrong by fifteen years? “Where are we?”

“Red Room Academy,” she answered, waiting for the next icy deluge. But it didn’t come.

“Correct. And your role here is…”

“I’m the Black Widow,” Natasha said. More fragments were coming back to her now. She could only hope they were accurate.

“And who is the Black Widow loyal to?”

“The glorious Soviet Union, formed on the wisdom of Comrade Lenin and Comrade Stalin,” Natasha answered quickly. She was not expecting the water to come once again but it did, soaking her once more. Her wrists were still bound to the chair but her hands shook in spite of them. Tremors wracked her whole body from the cold.

“You are loyal to the Red Room,” Madame B told her. There was another icy splash of water, electrifying every nerve ending. “To the KGB of which it is a part.” Another. “And to Mother Russia, your country.” One final deluge, and her eyes were nearly closed with exhaustion.

“My loyalties are to Red Room, the KGB, and Russia,” she mumbled, head lolling to the side. Her words were slurred, nearly incomprehensible, but Madame B seemed to accept them. Her teeth were chattering so badly that she’d bitten her tongue, and now the faint taste of blood was permeating her mouth. “And to you,” Natasha added sleepily.

There was definite satisfaction to the woman’s voice now. “And what will you do for us, Natasha?”

Her eyes opened. “Anything you ask.”

“Good. Thank you, Natasha. Now again. Your name is…”

“My name is Natasha Romanoff. The year is 2000. I’m at the Red Room Academy. I’m loyal to—“

“What year were you born, Natasha?” Madame B interrupted.

Another question, one to which she had no way of knowing the answer. She desperately calculated fifteen years after 1964: “19—1979.” Fresh blood wet her mouth, beginning to dribble out of the corner. Her body trembled and shook, covered in gooseflesh with every hair standing on end.

More water spilled over her, renewing the chill. “Incorrect. You were born in 1984. How old are you?”

She was twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one…sixteen. Natasha Romanoff was sixteen. She was Natasha Romanoff. “Sixteen,” she choked out.

“Now all together.”

“My name is Natasha Romanoff,” she whispered. “My birthday was in 1984. I am sixteen years old. I am the Black Widow. I am in the Red Room. I am loyal to the Red Room. I am loyal to Russia.” Her eyes squeezed shut as a fresh wave of icy liquid washed over her.

“Don’t just say it. Believe it,” the disembodied voice demanded. “ _Who are you?_ ”

“My name is Natash—“ Her muscles were slack now, not even locked and tight and trying to generate heat, not even trying to resist the next deluge. “ _My name is…_ ” Her own desperation had entered her voice but she didn’t care. _Fwoosh._

“Not good enough,” Madame B admonished.

“I am Natasha Romanoff,” she spit out, finding a tiny bit of extra strength inside herself. If she could just get these words out—if she could just believe them—this could be over. They would stop. “I was born in 1984. I am sixteen years old. I am the Black Widow. I am in the Red Room. I am loyal to the Red Room. I am loyal to Russia. I serve the KGB. That is my place.”

“What is your place in the world, Natasha?” Madame B asked, the tone of her voice scarily soft.

“I have no place,” Natasha ground out.

“That is correct,” Madame B said. A few cups of water dribbled out of the ceiling, sending an icy shock to her face, but that was all. “Now again,” she said.

“I am Natasha Romanoff,” she murmured. “I was born in 1984. I am sixteen years old. I am the Black Widow. I am in the Red Room. I am loyal to the Red Room. I am loyal to Russia. I serve the KGB. I have no place in the world.” A few more droplets stung her cheeks and eyes. She was cold, so cold…

“Again,” Madame B ordered.

“I am Natasha Romanoff. I was born in 1984. I am sixteen years old. I am the Black Widow. I am in the Red Room. I am loyal to the Red Room. I am loyal to Russia. I serve the KGB. I have no place in the world.”

“Again…”

* * *

A strange feeling settled in the pit of her stomach as her boots sank into the frost-tipped grass of the training field, but she couldn’t place what about the area might create such misgivings. Taking a deep breath in, the icy air chilled her lungs, lowering her body temperature minutely despite the upgraded uniform recently issued to her. The new material insulated heat more than the old, making her a bit warmer than she generally preferred.

Natasha turned away from the field, heading back inside. The hallway was also empty, as was much of this place. Maybe that was what was adding to her feeling of _wrongness_ , the way everything was empty. Not that she could remember a time that it hadn’t been, exactly, but the Red Room facility seemed to have been built for more than her and Madame B and a few others sprinkled around. Classrooms full of desks, movies made for children… Except there were no children here.

Pushing open the door to her room, she paused again in the entrance, trying to figure out what was different. The bed was made as impeccably as ever, capable of ricocheting a silver ruble. All the drawers of the bureau were shut. The mirror was clean.

But something was still off. Finally Natasha located the source of her uneasiness: a small white box in the northwest corner of the room. A small red light on it blinked every so often. Watching her.

She shrugged off the new addition as unimportant. Never had she entertained the fantasy that her life was private, nor was she sure this life was hers at all. They had fashioned her to be their asset, given her everything. The only thing she had done was survive.

Natasha sat down on the bed, about to pull back the covers and climb in when a new thought—new memory—surfaced. Possessions that were hers, not the Red Room’s. Immutable mementos of mutable past. She slipped off the mattress and crouched by the head of the bed, pushing it away from the wall. She slipped her hand into the hidden alcove she found there, not quite sure what she would pull out.

The first was a tube of cover-up paste, the sight of which made her pinky twinge. She glanced down at the offending finger, flexed it, but could not discern anything unusual about it. Then she reached in again, removing a silky piece of deep red fabric, torn and stringy at the edges. _Matushk_. _Mama._ Images flashed through her brain, slowly at first, and then gaining in speed as they broke through some invisible barrier in her mind. It did not shatter so much as perforate, but that perforation was enough for her to see—

—a house spitting fire—

—glass shattering—

—gravel in her knees as she fell to the ground, ball she had been playing with a moment before rolling away down the street—

—charred remains in a charred house, a charred life—

—screaming—

Natasha gasped from the force of it as the barrage of memories ended, blinking and breathing heavily and huddled in the corner and terrified. What she had seen made little sense; it was not possible that she had had a life before the Red Room, not a happy one. They—Russia, the state—had given her everything. But before…before she had a _Mama_ and a _Papa_ and now she knew, now she remembered that they hadn’t died in the war or because of the war or for the war—now she remembered that her _Papa_ had come home from a fight he didn’t believe in to be with them. Now she remembered that they had been home and safe and then that life had exploded.

She waited for more to come back to her—she waited for the answers to emerge from the recesses of her own mind. But nothing came. That was all. So the rationalization began.

Her father had left the war. But that didn’t mean the government had bombed them for it—they had showed her too much mercy for that. The war must have followed him home; that was the only explanation. The only explanation. The only.

She thrust her hand in the hole again, feeling around for anything else. It connected with a small scrap of paper and as soon as her fingertips connected with it she could have read the name off of it with her eyes closed. She unfurled it anyway, staring down hard at it as if to read between the deep black strokes of looped, flourishing letters imposed upon the white paper, written with such embellishment that the Red Room teachers would never approve because it was inefficient and unprofessional and required far too much… _feeling_. It was torn along the edges—out of a notebook, she suddenly remembered—doodles from far-gone days, doodles filled with hushed laughter and not-so-secret secrets and hiding places and stolen bakery bread.

The door burst open behind her and Natasha stuffed the tube, scrap of cloth, and paper back in the hole, standing to face whomever it was. The man standing there with a hardened expression rang no bells in her head, but she looked at him expectantly. “Yes, comrade?”

“It’s lights-out, Romanoff,” he said, removing a pair of metal handcuffs from his belt.

“Of course,” Natasha answered, hiding her confusion as she pushed the bed back to its normal position.

“You’re to put these on,” the man informed her, handing her the cuffs. He crossed his arms and planted his feet, watching her.

“Have I disappointed Madame B?” she asked, taking them. “Am I being punished?”

“Wearing cuffs to bed is a rule of the Red Room,” the man replied curtly. Was it? As a child, perhaps, to prevent running away, but once one was old enough to understand the gift the Red Room had given them? Not since…she tried to remember. Not since the American agent Margaret Carter had discovered one of their own through that method. It was dangerous. Revealing.

But Natasha nodded, well-aware of his stare as she climbed into the bed, then reached up to fasten her wrist to the bedpost. He stepped forward to snap another set on her other wrist. Turning off the light, he walked towards the exit. In the few seconds before the door closed behind him, she glimpsed him taking up post outside it like a…like a guard.

In the darkness her eyes once again found the camera newly mounted to the wall.

Like she was a prisoner.

Like she was an enemy. Or the daughter of one.

She did not sleep that night but lay awake, studiously ignoring the ache in her arms from the awkward position in favor of combing her mind for more memories. It was difficult—at times she thought she had something but it slipped away again, leaving her with a growing headache and little to show for it. The only thing she had accomplished was the knowledge of the conditioning… They had changed her memories, her basic identity. Her name. They had made everything else fuzzy, and even the things that were crystal clear had an especially vivid quality to them—she suspected they were implanted.

Even more confusing were other memories with no evidence of recent tampering—no buzzing in her head, no immediate sense of unease that made her want to think of something else entirely—but played as if seen through a pool of water. As if they had been changed years before without her knowledge, and only now did she have the frame of reference to recognize them for what they were. They had mentally lobotomized her brain, and not for the first time.

This was not the same Red Room she had left when they… Natasha fought hard, pushing through the barrier. When they had frozen her. Enhanced, and frozen. It was not the same Red Room after having stolen years from her life…how old was she? Sixteen. No.Twenty-one. Her eyebrows met in the darkness. Not the same. She hadn’t been a prisoner before. There was no question in her mind that she was now.

She resolved to escape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In other news, I just finished writing Budapest, so you all can look forward to that in oh...twenty-five chapters or so ;) As you can see, Natasha has some shit to get through first.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha breaks a few eggs in Moscow.

_Natasha departed the Barton farm with Fury’s permission to pursue her lead on the man who jumped off Clint’s balcony. She was headed to Russia._

Present.

There was a sickening crack, and her knuckles connected with the man’s nose. _Never punch a face with a closed fist, Natalia_ —but she didn’t care. Blood streamed from his broken nose and her knuckles connected again, sending his head jerking backwards with rebound. The chair he was strapped to tipped slightly, straining against the nails holding it in place, then settled back onto its four legs. Natasha retracted her arm again, ready to knock out few teeth out this time. “I’ll ask you again: where is Clint Barton?”

The man looked up at her, spitting a globule of blood out at her feet. “Я не знаю,” he growled.

“Wrong answer.” This time she felt a sharp bite of pain in her hand as she hit him but ignored it. She was focused on his pain, not her own. “The nail gun wasn’t just to stabilize the chair,” she promised, picking up the tool in question. She paused, pretending to consider. “Hands and feet are overdone, but the fingers are simply excruciating. So many nerves bundled together in a small area.”

“You don’t scare me,” the man muttered even as he shrank away from the sight of the gun. “Not more than they do.”

“Then you don’t know who I am,” Natasha replied.

He met her gaze. “I know who you are, Black Widow. It’s you who doesn’t know who _they_ are.”

She plunged the gun downward toward his bare foot and pulled the trigger. _PaCHUNK_. He howled and then abruptly stopped, realizing she had sent the nail through the small round space in between his longest toes. Natasha didn’t give him much time to recover. “Who—” _PaCHUNK_ , the other foot. “—are—” _PaCHUNK_ , in between the fingers wrapped tightly around the arm of the chair. “—they?” Reaching farther this time, she shoved the head of the gun into his gut. Pa _squelch_.

The man well and truly howled this time, and Natasha tossed the gun aside in favor of going back to her fists. _Thud, thud, thud_ —both sides of his face, until both of her hands were streaked crimson and she would’ve had to worry about leaving her DNA on him if she wasn’t wearing gloves and if her knuckles weren’t too used to the beating she was giving them to bleed. He wasn’t making much noise now, not since the fury building up inside of her had burst outwards and there was no one to stop her—no one because he wouldn’t tell her where Barton was, wouldn’t stop being thug and a bigoted imbecile long enough to save his own ass from her fists by _telling her what he knew._

She stopped suddenly, chest heaving in a way it hadn’t since the day she escaped Ivan, eyes wild and blood splattered on both of them and the floor surrounding. Out of control. She was out of control.

Taking a step backward, she shook more of the blood off her hands onto the floor, not daring to look at the man in front of her until she was sure she could handle it. He was no longer speaking, just streaming, oozing, and, in a few places, spouting, blood, and Natasha still didn’t have the answers she needed. Any more and he might not survive. As much as she hated it, the Black Widow needed him alive.

She leaned down and brought her face close to his, lifting his chin with a fingernail pressed deep into his jowl. “You still haven’t told me what I need to know,” she reminded him. A groan was his only response, so she stood up again to survey her handiwork. His face was barely recognizable, but her biggest concern—and his—was the nail lodged in his stomach. There was no doubt in her mind that it had pierced the lining of his intestine…untreated, a fatal injury. She picked up his home phone, dialing 112 and hitting the mute button before dropping it back on the table. “You’d better hope that the authorities even respond to calls in this neighborhood,” she told him. “Otherwise I’d start racking your brain on whether you’re up-to-date on your tetanus shot. Not that you can do anything about it now either way.” She leaned in close again, tapping the nail in his gut with her forefinger. “Do I have your attention?”

“Ye-yes,” he hissed, eyes nearly closing in pain. She pulled him forward by the collar of his shirt.

“I will find you at the hospital, and you will tell me what I want to know. If not—if you refuse, or if I find a trap waiting for me—I promise you will never leave it alive.” She stared at him coldly. “And the Black Widow you know does not break her promises.”

She cast her gaze around the apartment, scanning for any trace of herself she possibly could have left. Nothing, as usual. Natasha gave the man one last, hard stare, and left, double-timing it down the stairs. The sound of sirens—far away still, but definitely getting closer—caused her to skip the last flight, hopping up and over the railing. She twisted just as she started to fall to grab onto the bars fastening it to the ledge, slackening her grip ever so slightly to slide downwards. When the bars ended she dropped the last few feet, small bites of pain lancing up her ankles. Disregarding the sting, she walked quickly up the opposite street, stripping off her gloves as she went and being careful not to let any blood drip off of them on the way. She stuffed them in a lined pocket in her skin-tight tac suit before darting down a dingy side alley and digging through the plastic bags full of trash she found there. Natasha pulled out one that was triple-bagged, tearing it open and removing her street clothes from inside it, donning them over her suit.

As she came out of the alley, a man leered at her from where he lingered outside the smoke shop. “Сука, как ты не должен блуждать вокруг этих частей в одиночку,” he grinned, flicking his cigarette butt onto the ground at the sight of her approaching.

“Это _сука_ просто будет продолжать идти, и вы тоже,” Natasha warned, keeping her head tilted down. _This_ bitch _is just going to keep on walking, and you are too._ If the police came canvassing later—which she doubted they would, she was frankly a bit surprised an ambulance had been sent out this quickly—she didn’t want this scumbag to be able to ID her face. “Держись подальше; это последнее предупреждение.” _Stay away; this is your last warning._

He laughed, stepping closer and reaching out a hand to grab her wrist. His skin had no more than touched hers than she smashed a fist downward on it, snapping his wrist like a twig before twisting and wrenching it upwards with the man’s own pain reflex helping it along. She hit him in the face with his own broken bones, then planted a massive kick in the center of his stomach, pushing him away.

Pity she wasn’t wearing heels.

She left the man swearing and doubled over behind her, continuing on for another dozen blocks or so before reaching the ‘good’ part of town and hailing a cab. Almost without even thinking about it Natasha gave him the address of the office building across the street from her hotel. The lumpy and cracked cushions of the seats pressed into her uncomfortably as she stared alternately at her hands—they bore no marks from the man’s interrogation, thanks to her specialized gloves—and watchfully out the window. The sun was setting, another day gone by. Although not really for Natasha. She’d lost nine hours on the plane plus another eight in the time zone shift from JFK to SVO in Moscow.

With no space to pull over, the cab driver stopped in the middle of the street to let her out, almost like he was double-parked. She paid him with a few colorful ruble notes and then waited for him to pull away and disappear down the street before crossing it, heading into the hotel. The lobby was warmer than Russia ever should be, in Natasha’s opinion, especially in September. She walked straight past the reception desk to the elevator, riding it up to the second floor. A few more steps and she was inserting her key card and entering her hotel room.

Turning on the light, Natasha looked around, mentally cataloging every item in sight and making sure nothing had been taken while she was gone. It was mostly bulky bags full of equipment that she’d siphoned from one of her safehouses in Moscow, and she stepped over one of them to get to the bathroom. She scrubbed off the broken-wristed man’s touch as well as the imaginary blood that coated her hands until they were nearly red and raw— _like a surgeon, Natalia_ —before drying them just as harshly on the towel.

The hotel room was sparsely decorated, with wallpaper of a vaguely reddish-pink pattern and a deep brown comforter covering the white sheets of the bed. It was two twins pushed together in the European style, but neither she nor Bobbi minded enough to push them apart. Even if they hadn’t been familiar enough with each other to share a bed, they were professionals.

There was a small desk in one corner, and Natasha kept the shades drawn over the windows on principle. The only light in the room was yellow and artificial, emanating from three bare bulbs over her head. She crossed over to the smallest of the bags, pulling out something marginally more comfortable to sleep in and beginning to strip off her outer clothes and then her Black Widow uniform underneath. She was just considering ordering some form of room service—to the room next to hers, of course—when the door unlocked and Bobbi stepped through, bundled up against the cold. “How’d it go?” she asked in lieu of a greeting. “Did you find out anything?”

“Yes…but you’re not going to like it,” Agent Morse replied, meeting her eyes with a sigh as she shrugged her coat off. “Did you follow up on the lab report?”

“The traces of GSR, yes,” Natasha said. “They were done with it about an hour after you left, and it turned out to have a few unusual elements mixed into the residue. Given that there was no blood or residue at Clint’s apartment, the gun obviously wasn’t discharged there but sometime beforehand. I traced the formula back to an arms dealer S.H.I.E.L.D. did business with in the past, Viktor Zhestakov.”

“I know the name,” Bobbi murmured. “As I recall, we only did business with him very briefly.”

“For good reason,” Natasha acknowledged dryly. “After a little extra encouragement, he gave me a list of addresses he had on file for his clients who had him make home deliveries. Showed him the picture of the face, he was able to tell me which one.”

“You got a name,” she said interestedly.

“Yuri Zhivago.”

“Not quite, then.” The derision—masking the same frustration Natasha felt, she was sure—was palpable in Bobbi’s voice and expression. Her gaze dropped to the floor. “Well, despite the guy’s plagiarization of classic literature, it might not have mattered much anyway—”

“He had a roommate,” Natasha interrupted. “Who’s in the hospital now. But he knows something, so tomorrow I’ll finish his interrogation on site.”

“It might not have anything to do with the Red Room,” Bobbi told her suddenly, head shooting up to make eye contact.

“What Yuri said to me on the balcony…”

“Could have been to throw S.H.I.E.L.D. off, or you in particular,” she said, launching into her story as quickly as possible without even taking another breath. “I went to the Moscow base only to find that the building the Russian government had seen fit to give us was barely habitable and had less than two hundred square feet of workspace. And Agent Grechenko was too green to report such a lack of cooperation back in. When I showed up he had just enough of his wits about him to inform me that…” Now she took a deep breath. “…S.H.I.E.L.D. had a breach, Tasha. Either from another virus piggybacking on Stark’s hack or from the Academy. Back at the Hub they’ve found some stray code on our servers related to it, even though he removed it months ago. And they’ve just started using the Battle of New York as a training simulation at the new Academies of Operations and Communications. Recently there was a breach there too, an issue with one of the new cadets.”

“What are you saying?” Natasha asked, voice low and soft. A prickle was steadily making its way over her skin, the feeling of being watched…or _seen_.

Bobbi sat down on the bed next to her, leaving a good twelve inches of space between them. “Your interrogation of Loki…they stole the footage. It’sall over the darkweb. Anyone who knew where to look could have seen it and known that line.” Natasha was silent. “… _Love is for children_ ,” Bobbi clarified after a few seconds, piercing gaze obviously trying to gauge Natasha’s emotions. “Don’t kill Stark; we don’t know for sure it was his fault.”

“The number of things we’re not sure about is increasing,” Natasha growled, standing up and facing away from Bobbi.

The agent sighed. “I know. And I hate to say it, but…you might want to think about laying off on the roommate. He may not be mixed up in this at all, and if he isn’t… I’ve seen the subjects of your interrogations before. This won’t reflect well on you if he’s simply a civilian. There’ll be ramifications. Hearings. Penalties. And all that’s assuming he lives.”

“He’ll live,” Natasha muttered. “You didn’t hear him, Bobbi. He’s connected, something about me not knowing who ‘they’ are.”

“Moscow slums, _everyone’s_ connected to a group of some sort,” the agent answered dryly.

“He knew my name. Black Widow.”

Bobbi stood up as well. “You were pretty well known in the crime business only a few years ago. It’s not inconceivable to think that your reputation hasn’t faded much…especially in Russia.” Natasha was silent. “What I mean to say is…you don’t want to go down this road if there’s a chance you’re wrong. Because I know what it’ll do it you afterwards—go against everything you’re trying hard to wipe out. It’s not what Barton would want.” She waited, shifting on her feet. “Natasha?”

“I’m calling Stark anyways,” she said finally, making no promises.

Bobbi took a deep breath. “I figured.”

“Is there anything else I should know about?” Natasha asked, turning back around.

“No, nothing,” Agent Morse shook her head, a few strands of blonde hair coming loose from where she had tied it back. “Just…remember that everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. is working really hard on this too, Natasha. Even if you still don’t want me here…know you’re not alone.” Everyone with clearance—it wasn’t said but heard nonetheless. “And Tasha?” There was a level of vulnerability not usually present in Bobbi’s face. “I’m sorry.”

She wasn’t quite sure how to respond, but her friend seemed to understand that. Bobbi walked into the bathroom without looking back and shut the door behind her, leaving Natasha alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would love to know what you thought!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha escapes the Red Room.

_Despite the Red Room’s attempt at reconditioning, Natalia—Natasha—realized this was not the same Red Room as when they put her on ice. As such, she resolved to escape._

Past.

Sneaking out of the facility proved to be much harder than when she was a child. Natasha flattened herself against the back side of the door, scarcely daring to breathe as two large men stomped past. She twisted her head to stare through the crack between the door and the frame, noting the large automatic rifles slung across their bodies. Once the hall was quiet again, she pushed the door outwards. It let out a long, harsh _creeeaaaaak_ from its hinges and she immediately stopped, spitting into her hand and slathering it across the metal. Oil would be better like they used to when the doors moved soundlessly—Natasha couldn’t tell if that was a real memory or simply her own expectation.

She pushed it open again and it responded with a relative quiet. Natasha slipped out the opening, moving down the hallway with light steps until she reached another door, one that she recognized from her youth as the door with a busted lock. Inside was a high window that her smaller self used to hoist herself out of, and beyond that… Freedom. And ten miles south, Moscow.

Black Widows weren’t supposed to desire freedom. In truth, Natasha wasn’t even sure she knew what the word meant. To do whatever she wanted was a foreign concept—she didn’t see how anyone could truly be free. They still had to eat, to drink, to breathe… She knew freedom as a core value of the enemy, an unattainable American ideal…

Not as a tangible thing to be gained, or won, or taken. In this instance, Natasha just wanted _out_.

The problem was that the lock was no longer there, replaced by a simple handle with a white box next to it that had a straight slit down one side of it. Natasha didn’t have a keycard. She didn’t know much about who had a keycard either, or how to deactivate it and make it open. The guards were the only ones she’d seen with IDs clipped to their breast pockets. It was time for a new plan.

Stealthily, Natasha headed back to her room, where she changed into her Black Widow uniform and then pulled on a low-cut shirt and tan pants over the tight leather. She unzipped the top of her uniform to hide it under the shirt and expose her breasts to the cold air. Nowhere near the point of indecency, but…enough to draw attention.

The next task was to find a mark. Natasha was used to being told who the target was, and tailoring her skills to that. Occasionally she’d had to find her own way through security, but it hadn’t involved seduction. A flash to distract, perhaps, but nothing more. That was always the final step, the “crown jewel” of her training to which Madame B had always referred—the reason they gave their most accomplished graduates the title of Black Widow. The thought stopped her just as she was about to apply her deep red lipstick, trying to recall the memories that made her think that. Nothing. But still, she knew it to be true.

Lifting the lipstick, she thought better of it and placed it back down on the sink again. It was too bold to go unnoticed while trying to move surreptitiously through the Red Room facility, and it would undoubtedly leave a mark on the man on whom she eventually used it.

Something akin to disgust settled in the pit of her stomach, the tiny hairs on her arms rising at the prospect of doing _this_ again, and for a moment she was afraid she would back out as bile flooded her throat. Her knees felt wobbly and she immediately dropped to the floor with her knees tucked up to her chest, controlledly hyperventilating in the only way the Black Widow knew how. Swallowing hard, she concentrated on her huffs of breath—why did she always react this way before missions such as this one? It wasn’t in her training; in fact, it went directly against it, but…she couldn’t help herself.

And there was that _always_ again.

Natasha swallowed again, forcing herself to be calm. She breathed in and out through her nose. In and out. Somehow she knew this was a common experience at times like this. In, out. As the Widow, she also knew she had never let Madame B or any of her other teachers or her handler see her in this state. In, out. This wasn’t the Black Widow they’d trained, perfect and graceful and obedient and unfeeling and ready to serve the Union, wherever, whenever, and in whatever capacity they asked of her. In, out. This was the Natalia she hid from everyone because if they knew, they’d kill them both without hesitation. The Room did not allow selfishness or sentiment or _weakness_.

She’d never understood why she got like this. Her fellow classmates…they hadn’t had this problem, not that she could tell. Some of them had even looked forward to these, enjoyed them, but Natasha? Something was wrong with her. Broken within her. This was something she hated with every fiber of her being, and…and that was wrong. She was supposed to be better than that. Ivan’s favorite. Madame B’s prize pupil. Highest marks. She was supposed to be the Black Widow.

The reason she’d made it this far was that she’d never let her own weakness stop her from fulfilling her purpose.

_Honor, duty, sacrifice_. Despite the fuzziness they’d cast over her brain, she had no trouble remembering that.

With a deep breath, Natasha forced herself to her feet and stared into the mirror again. She was beautiful, like the Widow. He would want her. It wouldn’t be hard. And nothing she hadn’t done before.

By the time she made it outside her room, the tension had been expelled from her body and the doubt from her mind. It didn’t take her long to identify a suitable target for her ministrations—a guard about to go on shift in fifteen minutes from the sound of what his commander had said after banging on the door. After the commander had left, Natasha let herself fall down from the ceiling where she had been bracing herself and landed on the floor lightly but on all fours. The pain was especially sharp in her wrists but she shook it off, glancing around furtively. Fifteen minutes most likely meant he was up and getting ready, but not so urgent that a little… _play time_ would be out of the question from the get-go.

Steeling herself and taking on an expression of uncertainty, she placed a hand on the door handle of his quarters and twisted it. Natasha pushed it open and about half a foot and shuffled forward. The guard was in the middle of buttoning the top button of his starched white shirt and stopped suddenly at the sight of her. She didn’t miss the way his eyes glanced at the gun a few meters away, and she felt a pang deep inside her chest. Not the same Red Room.

“What do you want?” he asked bluntly.

Leaving the door ajar in order to not make it look like she was trapping him in with her, Natasha took that as a cue to step in a little further, making her voice soft. “I, uh…Madame B told me that I hadn’t practiced in a while, and she sent me in here to…”

“Madame B sent you?” She took another step towards him, slowly but unthreateningly closing the distance between them, swaying her hips ever so slightly. “What did she say you needed practice with, exactly?” The guard frowned.

“I chose you because…well, you’re special,” Natasha continued, creeping close enough to reach out and touch him. She refrained. Not yet. “Even I can see that.”

He swallowed. “That’s nice of you to say, Widow, but…”

“It’s Natasha,” she whispered, coming to a halt centimeters from him. “And there’s no one I’d rather practice with.” Her hand found its way to the center of his firm chest, feeling his pulse began to leap and surge at her touch. She pushed him backward, barely moving him before his legs collided with the edge of the bed and he fell back on it. She followed with a fluid movement, rising up above him and straddling his waist with her legs. His eyes were wide but his pupils dark and dilated as she snaked up him so their faces were aligned, using her arms to hold herself stationary just above him—close enough for them to feel the radiating heat of each other’s body without anything more than the deep V-neck she wore brushing against him as she had slid upwards.

Natasha leaned down to press her lips to his. He tasted like…like vodka and old milk. Nothing like the rich men they usually sent her to bed and then kill or rip off, but not the worst she’d ever had to seduce. She deepened the kiss, lowering herself onto him, feeling his excitement rising. She traced a finger over his jawline, down his over his Adam’s apple as it bobbed, then further, popping the buttons of his shirt. Then her knees clenched around him, jabbing sharply into his sides as her fingers tightened around his neck, pressing into the sides of it firmly but not breaking the kiss. His body was languid for a moment until he realized what was happening, but by then it was too late. The most he could do was bite at her lower lip before succumbing to the lack of oxygen flow to his brain, but Natasha was unfazed as a drop of her blood wetted his teeth. She counted out the seconds with heartbeats—her own, not his—and added another thirty before releasing him and pushing off of his limp body.

Feeling again as if something vile had oozed into it, Natasha wiped her mouth off on her sleeve and then swiped his badge off the desk. Her body, if she had allowed it to, would have been trembling, but she held herself steady as she slipped out the door again. The hard part was over.

Dodging into a supply closet to avoid yet another guard on his rounds holding a large assault rifle, she hid until he had passed and then made her way back to the door she had been trying for open earlier without further incident. For a moment after sliding the card through the slot she was sure unauthorized access alarms were going to go off in the facility, but none did. She snuck inside, making sure the door latched behind her.

Finally, finally, this room felt right to her. Peeling paint and scrape marks from heavy objects on the floor, cobwebs in every corner and a smudgy blackboard on one wall, where names had been written and then badly erased. A few were legible, a few more partially so: _—ya Skovakova. Elena Sater. Dorothy Underw—._ On the wall opposite the door was a high window with a chip of glass missing from its bottom right corner. Natasha crossed over to it and wiggled her finger into the hole, jimmying the lock open as she stood on her tiptoes. The edges of the glass were weathered down to complete dullness, but as she looked carefully she could spot the tiny sliver of scarlet trapped eternally in one of the tiny cracks, the only sign she’d ever been here before—and one she’d tried ceaselessly to remove with no success back when the glass was sharp enough to cut.

The window loosened at the hinges and she pushed it outwards as far as she could reach before placing her palms flat against the windowsill and jumping upwards, leveraging her arms to pull herself up and through the hole. Her momentum carried her legs forward and parallel to her body until she had come full circle and her back slammed against the side of the building, knocking the breath out of her with her arms twisted at an awkward angle. Almost immediately she released with one of them, flipped over,and reached out for the pipe that ran alongside it, seeking a better handhold, but her hand closed around thin air and her fingernails scrabbled against the rough edge of the building. After half a second of freefall, all of her weight was dropped on the one hand still clutching the windowsill and her stomach pressed tautly against the building’s face. She dangled from it, feet scuffing against the building trying to find a foothold. Fire overtook her straining fingers, feeling as if she’d dipped them in lava, but in one giant surge she managed to thrust up her other arm to latch onto the sill as well, hanging there with frenzied breaths. Her right foot found its way into a crevice and relieved some of the pressure, and then her left a little further up. Still gripping tightly, she began to descend one step at a time, cursing the Red Room for removing the old pipe she used to slide down. A few feet from the ground she simply let go, letting her knees bend on impact.

Natasha stood up shakily, bringing her hands up to dust them off only to find them bleeding and smeared with blood and grime. She gingerly did the best she could to wipe it off on the grass and her own spittle, but the skin was torn and shredded in places from the rough exterior of the complex. It stung.

Casting her hands down at her sides, she took off for the chain link fence. As she sprinted she considered covering her hands before climbing it, but her blood was already marking her path below the window anyway—they would know which way she had gone. At the last second she leaped upwards, fingers closing around the wiry squares of metal, and then she began to quickly scale it. When she got to the point where it curved upwards over her head, she simply lodged her feet in the holes and climbed the last few centimeters with the blood rushing to her head. Then she unhooked her feet and hung from the edge of it before pulling herself up and over the hump, practically somersaulting over the other side and landing in a swift barrel roll. The ground rose to meet her quickly and she bounced slightly on her knees, spine, then shoulders before coming to a stop.

Not allowing any time for the tiny figurative birds circling her head to settle down, Natasha immediately got to her feet and surveyed her surroundings. Tall, dilapidated structures. Smoke rising unchecked from one of them. Trash clogging the gutter, a plastic bag billowing away in the breeze. A car—sleeker than any she’d ever seen, yet with rust eating up one side and every single one of the windows smashed—screamed by with music blaring out of it, filled with expletives and yelling and a beat that reverberated through the entire street and deep in her chest. Music _in English_.

It was as if the city had sprung up overnight. But not just the city—the slums. The Red Room wasn’t the only thing that had changed while she was…whatever they had done to her.

Natasha felt uprooted all over again.

Being on the streets again should have reminded her of when she had snuck out of the Red Room as a child, roamed them with Mar… With no one. She had been alone.

But she was older now, truly on the run—Natasha didn’t have that luxury. The city had changed; she had changed. She could no longer subsist on stale bakery discards and amuse herself by sneaking into the rafters of ballet studios to stay warm and watch the real ballerinas train. She needed somewhere safe to hide until she could figure out her next move.

There was always _him_. She knew she had just broken through another piece of her conditioning as she remembered the scrap of paper thrust into her hand at age eleven, just before two burly men arrived at the door and took him away. The odds of him surviving all these years… Yet, he was the one who had taught her to be a survivor. Natasha remembered unfurling his last message and memorizing the contents—little had she known her memory would be so unreliable later. It had been a map, directions. She took another breath of chilled air. 877 _Zima_ _Ulitsa_. She would be safe there.

Well, safe was relative. Right now, she had no one. There, with him, she had someone.

She went.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha deals with Stark and follows up on a lead.

_After tracing the unique chemical signature of the gunshot residue found on the attacker’s clothing to an arms dealer in Lobnya, Russia, Natasha tracked down the roommate of the man who had died and tortured him for information. However, Bobbi called from S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters informing her that the footage of her interrogation of Loki aboard the helicarrier had been leaked and the Red Room might not be involved after all. Tony Stark may be responsible for the leak._

Present.

Natasha found his contact information and pressed the call button firmly, lifting the phone to her ear. It rang a few times before the line became live. “—RVIS, take that,” came Stark’s voice from somewhere farther away.

There was a pause, and then: “Hello, Miss Romanoff,” JARVIS spoke directly into her ear.

“I want to talk to Stark,” Natasha said firmly to the AI.

“Mr. Stark is unavailable at the moment. May I take a message?” JARVIS asked politely.

“Yes. My message is that if he doesn’t pick up his phone this instant, when I get back to the States I will kick him hard enough between the legs that he won’t be able to do anything in his precious tower but ride the elevator for a week.”

“I will duly relay the message, Miss Romanoff,” JARVIS replied coolly, having absolutely no reaction to the hostile tone of it.

“Wait, wait!” Stark’s panicked voice came through. There was some crackling on the other end before the sound cleaned up again. He huffed. “All right, Romanoff, no need to get your skintight leather pants in a tizzy; I’m here. What’s so urgent?” He stopped. “Hold on. Dummy. _Dummy_. DUMMY! Put that down. Okay. We’re good. Don’t make me deactivate you and sell you for junk parts.” He spoke to her again. “Sorry about that. You were saying?”

“Security camera footage was leaked on the darkweb of me interrogating Loki,” she informed him. “S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best techs say your code might be responsible.”

“Maybe they’re reading it wrong,” he suggested cockily.

“Do I sound like I’m in the mood for your antics?” she asked, allowing a chill to enter her voice.

“No, you actually sound pretty stressed out. You know, I have just the remedy for that though, three words: Full. Body. Massage,” he replied. “I know this really great place in downtown Manhattan, and they’ve set up an Avengers discount. I might’ve taken the Capsicle there once or twice—you know, to warm him up.”

“Stark,” she said warningly.

“Romanoff.”

“Tony.” Now her voice was downright dangerous.

“Natasha?” he squeaked. “Fine, what do you want me to do about it?”

“Scrub it from the internet,” she told him. “And never hack S.H.I.E.L.D. again.”

“I’ll get JARVIS right on that first part, but the second…”

“I will hand you your ass on a plate.”

He made a funny noise. “You should know, I don’t like being handed things. Maybe you could hand it to Pepper, she loves—“ The death glare she was giving the wall in front of her could have set it on fire, and it seemed that was coming across in her silence to Stark. “Fine. Already promised the same thing to the man with the eyepatch anyway.” She was about to hang up. “Oh, but while I have you: carpeting or flooring?”

She frowned. “What?”

“For your floor in the tower. It’s your floor, so, carpeting or flooring?” For some reason the question didn’t piss her off further; she actually found her muscles relaxing slightly as she stretched her legs out on the bed. Arguing with Stark and threatening him? It usually added up to a good day, and she could use a little bit of good day right now.

Plus she had won the argument.

“Flooring, it’s easier to wash the blood off.”

He balked, “What exactly are you planning on doing in my tower?”

“You said it would be our tower,” Natasha reminded him, “and I’m planning ahead. We’re the Avengers. Eventually someone somewhere is going to dislike what we’re doing and attack.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to go all postal on them in your bedroom! My security system is—“

“I worked undercover at Stark Industries,” Natasha drawled. “Trust me when I tell you your system isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“Well, I’ve upgraded it since then, _Natalie_.”

“So you’ve fixed the faulty wiring on the alarm in the sixth floor window?” Natasha asked.

“Umm…yes,” Stark replied. “But would you mind specifying which sixth floor window?”

“Uh huh. Goodnight, Stark,” Natasha said. She was about to hang up on him again when again he stopped her.

“Natasha, is everything all right? No…alien attacks I should be worrying about?”

“It doesn’t concern you,” she told him. “Just do the web-scrubbing thing.”

“You could call in the Avengers for whatever it is; it’d be good for us to help,” Stark pointed out.

“This is personal,” Natasha said, anger lacing her tone.

“The Avengers can do personal. In fact, we’d be h—”

“I said, it’s personal. The Avengers Initiative is nearly untested, barely off the ground. Forgive me if I don’t leap to bring in a man from the forties who agreed to let a German scientist experiment on him in the middle of World War II, a recently-ex-war-profiteer who barely made it onto the Avengers roster because he doesn’t play well with others, a guy who’s been hiding out in India for years because he turns giant and green and destructive when he’s stressed, and a god from Asgard who we know nearly nothing about except that his brother’s a homicidal maniac who tried to destroy New York to take over the world.” Suddenly her voice had gotten low and harsh again, her simmering, built-up anger over everything coming through. “Goodbye, Stark.” She actually did hit the end call button this time, tossing the phone down hard enough on the bed that it bounced a few times before coming to rest.

She tucked her legs up to her chest on the large bed, feeling very alone in the hotel room. Not that she didn’t like being alone—she just would have liked this to be a standard op with Barton sitting next to her. Bobbi wasn’t nearly the same, and she’d sent her off to the lobby for recon anyway, just to make sure nothing nasty walked through the front door. Natasha shook her head to clear it, momentary wallow over. She picked up the phone and first called room service, and then pulled up a map of the area. She swiped her finger across it, locating the man’s apartment easily and then searching in an outward spiral for the hospital nearest to there.

Finding one, Natasha ran a quick search on the facility to discover that it was medium-sized and had the largest trauma sector in the city, highly increasing the chances that her man would have been taken there. She copied the hospital’s phone number down, typing it into her notes, before hearing some commotion outside. Natasha got up quickly and strode to the door. She opened it.

“But we…didn’t order…that!” the older woman next door was saying loudly in broken English. The bellboy looked thoroughly confused as he pushed his cart to the side and pulled a small notepad from his belt, flipping through the pages. “Sinto muito, o nosso Russo é muito ruim,” the woman continued in Portuguese, looking haphazardly at her husband. “Acho que houve algum tipo de mistura; poderíamos falar com alguém responsável?”

“Простите, я думаю, что было предназначено для меня,” Natasha interrupted, raising her voice a few notes higher than normal and adding a slight youthful insecurity to her tone. _Excuse me, I think that’s mine._ “Room 203?”

“I’m sure it was 204,” the bellboy replied, also in Russian. “But…” He looked between the elderly couple and Natasha. “It’s yours, I guess.” He wheeled the cart in front of her door instead. “It’ll be billed to your room for when you check out. Sorry about that, ma’am.”

“Just a misunderstanding!” Natasha smiled cheerily at the couple, switching to English. “Sorry for disturbing you.”

“Está bem, está bem,” the lady assured her kindly before shutting the door. The smile left Natasha’s face as quickly as she had plastered it on. She took the two small plates from the bellboy and tipped him before shutting her own door. Crossing over and setting them on the bed, she checked her phone for any new messages from S.H.I.E.L.D. or world news that pertained to her op. Staffing changes on the helicarrier… Yet another crashed Chitauri vehicle discovered in New York… Lady Sif departs for Asgard after assisting with the clean up… Agent Victoria Hand to be promoted and placed in charge of the new base, christened “The Hub”…

In other words, nothing relevant. Natasha scraped the last few bites of potatoes off her plate and then moved on to the other, which had cooked vegetables. Consulting her phone for the time, she began to plan out her play for tomorrow. Now that she had the hospital’s phone number and the man’s name, she could—

Bobbi’s warning came back to her. _“You don’t want to go down this road if there’s a chance you’re wrong. Because I know what it’ll do it you afterwards—go against everything you’re trying hard to wipe out.”_ But her gut was telling her she was right so strongly—this man was involved. He had to be. And…it wasn’t like she was going to kill him.

No. Just threaten. Rough him up a bit.

A lot.

Enough to have put him in the hospital already and be going back tomorrow for more.

_“It’s not what Barton would want.”_

That’s where Bobbi was wrong, Natasha thought obstinately. What Barton would want…what Barton would want was to be with his family, not paying for Natasha’s past. She hadn’t even known him back when she was in the Red Room. He’d had nothing to do with her defecting, either—it had been two years in between.

And yet somehow, ignoring all the odds, her gut was telling her that it _was_ the Room. That this man _was_ involved. And that doing this was the right thing to do.

Only problem was, her gut had been twisted too many times to count by too many parties. She couldn’t always trust it, no matter how much she wanted to. The parents she could barely remember, the Red Room, Ivan, her clients as an assassin-for-hire, Barton, S.H.I.E.L.D., Fury, now the Avengers, Laura, Cooper and Lila…all tugging different ways so that she could barely tell which way was up anymore.

Natasha needed to clear her head. Which meant sleep. Which meant letting her guard down. Which meant the possibility of dreams.

“Get a grip, Romanoff,” she muttered to herself, placing the her now-empty dish by the sink in the bathroom and placing Bobbi’s uneaten one in the mini fridge for her to consume in a few hours when she got tired of lobby-duty. Natasha prepped for bed, brushing her teeth and washing her face. She locked the five sets of locks on the door, only two of which were provided by the hotel. She made sure her tertiary escape route was in place and coiled next to the window—Barton affectionately called it her ‘Widow’s Line’ after attempting to use it once and ending up in the S.H.I.E.L.D. infirmary for severe rope burn—which was also bolted tight. Then she picked up her gun, reloaded it, turned the safety on, and stuffed it under her pillow.

Natasha turned out the light and laid down.

* * *

The morning came with watery light and the sound of her alarm ringing quietly next to her ear. She opened her eyes to gray storm clouds outside the window and the feeling of having dreamed something but being blissfully unable to recall it.

Natasha slipped out of the bed and stood next to the window, moving the curtain to gaze outside. Down below a taxi was letting a couple with two small children out in front of her hotel. Across the street, a small café was just opening its doors for the morning. Up above, the sun peeked through the clouds for a second though it still looked like rain. It was then that she knew what she had to do…if she didn’t do something, the world was perfectly content to just go on turning without him. Until it needed him. Until it needed them. Like New York.

And if she was wrong…perhaps it would become red in her ledger, but for the right reasons. Natasha could live with those reasons.

Bobbi rolled over in bed as Natasha flicked on a light, having been up for several more hours than Natasha during the night. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she mumbled. “Do you need me to get up?”

“No,” she replied. “I got it.”

Bobbi opened her eyes, affixing Natasha with a brilliant—if sleepy—blue stare. “I’m trusting you.”

“Then I’m not the one you need to be worried about doing stupid things,” Natasha said with a slight quirk upward of her lips. Bobbi’s eyes closed again as she snorted into her pillow.

Leaving her fellow agent to get a few more precious minutes of sleep, she dressed quickly in a civilian outfit and did her makeup in such a way that she appeared younger than she actually was. Thinking back to the man, Konstantin Polzin, she took out her case of contact lenses and selected a pair that most closely matched his—watery blue. She didn’t have to worry about security at the hospital in the way of metal detectors or pat downs, so two handguns were tucked away in her coat along with one strapped high up on her thigh. Once her cover was completed, she picked up her phone and dialed the hospital.

“Lobnenskaya Central City Hospital, how may I help you?” a woman asked in Russian.

“Please, I think you admitted my brother last night and I need to know if he’s okay!” Natasha made her voice breathy and panicky, mimicking a younger, frightened woman.

“What’s your brother’s name, ma’am? I can check the records to see if we admitted anyone with that name.”

“Konstantin Polzin,” she replied, choking back a fake sob. “Is he okay? Please tell me he’s okay.”

“Please hold,” the woman on the other end said, and Natasha muted the phone as a wordless Russian ballad began to play. She pulled out some of the scentless Division C rations Barton hated so much and ripped the thin foil wrapper with her fingers, biting off a hunk of thick, brown, chewy blandness. It had a texture somewhat like cold fruit leather and had the habit of picking up the smells of whatever was around it as its only flavor. The contents of her suitcase had unfortunately shifted during flight, so this one contained a wonderful hint of gunpowder.

“All right, Miss…”

“Polzin,” Natasha supplied quickly as she took the phone off mute.

“Yes. Your brother was admitted around six o’clock last night by the paramedics. I can’t discuss his condition with you over the phone, but he’s currently in a regular ward and not the ICU. If you come down to the hospital—”

“I will, right away!” Natasha chirped. “Which room is he in?”

“Just come to the front desk and someone will help you out,” the woman promised. “Is there anything else?”

“No, _spasibo_ ,” Natasha said. She hung up before chewing and swallowing the rest of the ration. She tucked three small, localized EMPs the size of button batteries into her jacket pocket for any security cameras there might be and then exited her hotel room, making sure the door locked behind her. After exchanging a quick hello in English to the Portuguese family coming out at the same time as her, she used Russian for the rest of it—hailing the cab, giving the driver directions, and paying him. Her stash of rubles from her Moscow safehouse would have to be replenished after this.

Upon arriving, she nearly jumped out of the cab and raced up to the front doors of the hospital. It was a squat, dark gray building, but the inside was nicer than the outside, looking semi-clean and much more inviting. She approached the front desk with a somewhat frantic air. “Could you please tell me which room Konstantin Polzin is in?”

“Are you family?” the man behind the desk asked.

“Yes, I’m his sister.”

“ID?”

Natasha pretended to reach for her purse only to realize she wasn’t wearing one. “I must’ve forgotten it at home! I was just in such a hurry to get here and make sure he was okay that…it must’ve slipped my mind! Mama’s going to kill me if I don’t see him and make sure he’s going to be all right; she’s at home and couldn’t come herself because of her osteoporosis and it’s just so hard already doing all of the housework to make sure she doesn’t break anything because the doctors say if she has another accident we really should move her into an assisted living center and—” She stopped. “I’m sorry, I’m rambling, but I’m just really worried about my brother.” Natasha blinked, pretending to hold back tears. With much practice her eyes were already watering. “Is there any way I could see him without an ID?”

The man looked thoroughly uncomfortable at the prospect of dealing with a weepy and desperate sister much longer. “I can bend the rules just this once,” he says gruffly. He typed something into his computer. “He’s in Room 108: down that hallway and the first left, then keep walking until you find him.”

“Thank you so much!” Natasha gushed before turning away from the desk. She pulled the door to the hallway open and strode down it, pretending to dab her eyes with a tissue that also conveniently his her face from any security cameras they might’ve installed. She turned into the second corridor, walking along it and counting door numbers as she went. She had a stiffening feeling in her gut as she approached that the room with two police officers standing guard outside it was his, and her gut was right.

“This room is restricted access only, ma’am,” the one on the left told her, putting up a hand to halt her in her tracks. Their combined bulk blocked her view into the room entirely.

“I don’t understand. That’s my brother!” Natasha petitioned. “You have to let me see him.”

The officer shook his head. “You’re not on the list.”

“But I don’t understand,” Natasha repeated plaintively as her annoyance began to mount. “Why is there a list? What’s going on?”

“This man is a known criminal and our orders are to not allow visitors of any kind—”

A woman pushed her way through the guards from inside the room towards Natasha and at her touch they immediately parted for her. Her hair was somewhat unkempt—falling out of the bun on the back of her head—and her eyes red-rimmed.

The woman slapped Natasha across the face.

Surprise was the first thing Natasha registered following the slap, and then the sharp clicks of the woman’s heels striding away quickly down the hallway. Surprise at the slap, though it hasn’t been particularly hard. Just enough to sting. Surprise that all of her training had allowed it to happen.

Surprise that she could still feel surprise anymore.

“Let her in,” called a weak voice from within. “And shut the door.” The officers looked at each other and then at Natasha, whose sister-guise was only half-employed. More was going on than met the eye, and she didn’t like feeling like she was the one being played instead of the other way around. Nevertheless, the men gestured her inside and then shut the large blue door behind her, remaining outside like guards.

Natasha’s eyes swept over her surroundings. The steady beep, beep of a heart rate monitor filled the air, and she located the machine as just to the right of the small bed. The man she had tortured was propped up in it, IVs feeding into his taped hand and bandages covering about a fourth of the body parts she could see.

She went with authoritative. “We have unfinished business, Mr. Polzin.”

“Actually it’s Yulian Kostov,” he rasped, picking up something from the tray next to him. He held up a badge for her to see. “Moscow Police.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alone and on the run, Natasha goes to the only person she knows outside the Red Room—her old, unorthodox teacher, Ivan Petrovich.

_Natasha’s discovery that the Red Room was not what she had thought it to be caused her to run away from the Academy. However, the world was not quite as she remembered it being fifteen years ago, so she went to the only person she knew on the outside for help: her old teacher, Ivan._

Past.

Ivan opened the door, but it was a different Ivan than she remembered. More gray hair than black, chopped close to his head, no more than a few millimeters. His eyes widened in surprise at the sight of her before his crooked, yellowing teeth showed through in a smile, mottled like half-used erasers. “Natalia Romanova,” he breathed. He stepped aside to let her in. “You are truly _Devushka Ivana_ , no? After all these years…” He shut the door behind her. “You have returned to me.”

“Yes, Ivan.” She faced him with a straight back and an upward chin, but inside she was squirming as if she was that—his—young girl again. Natasha wished that in all the changes of this strange new world, his eyes would have been one of them. That was too much to ask.

They still glittered.

“I knew you would. You were always special, Natalia,” he smiled.

“It’s Natasha now,” she corrected him smoothly, breaking his gaze to cast hers around the space. An apartment, quite large with unadorned white walls and wood flooring. Spartan. Simple. But still much too fancy for someone living under the threat of Red Room discovery for over twenty years.

“Natasha,” he mused, as if not at all surprised by the change. “They used Faustus on you, I think?” He took a step back, examining her more fully. “Yes, I can see it now. How much time did they take from you?”

“Fifteen years.” She let no hint of emotion into her voice, nor did she really feel any. She was exhausted, and tired of running.

“This world is strange to you then,” Ivan said. His expression was approaching something close to manic glee. “But it has brought you back to me, and now I can show you what I have been working on.” He gestured her further into the apartment, into the kitchen where he appeared to be in the process of cooking a very large dinner to feed one man.

“Will it help me survive?” Natasha asked, following him. A bit of apprehension was turning into a headache at the base of her skull… Ivan had been the one to design the treatment programs and insist they were necessary back at the old Red Room. Before he became too crazy for even them to support.

Ivan made no answer, just beckoned as he reached the pantry and pulled up a trapdoor set within its flooring. He went down first, and Natasha cautiously followed. When she turned from the rungs of the metal ladder to the opening of the hallway opposite from it, her heart froze in her chest.

Eleven girls, chained to sinks and desks and radiators. Ripped, torn clothes. The stench of urine lingering in the air.

She stared at the girls. The girls stared back at her. Every single one of them had bright red hair.

“Natasha, I’d like you to meet my _kukly_.” The word jarred her in the exact way it should not have. Dolls. “ _Kukly_ , Natasha.” One of the girls let out a whimper but other than that were was no sound following Ivan’s announcement. He looked almost disappointed. “Natalia Romanova! Your future, _kukly_.” He turned back to Natasha. “I’ve been hoping to see you ever since the Soviet Union became neither Soviet nor a union.” He gestured back up the ladder, and she climbed it, giving one last glance back at the girls before she reached the top.

“Who are they?” she asked as he emerged as well.

“You don’t recognize them? The youngest of the Red Room’s students. I collected them,” he said, a hint of pride coloring his voice. “But enough about them. They are merely works in progress, yet to become _real_ girls. You are the true miracle, Natasha.” He eyed her, placing his thin hands on her shoulders—no, lower than that, feeling downward. She kept herself stiff under his probing. “Ah, _khorosho_ , you have not become a fat American in my absence.” He released her and her body tingled where his hands had been, remembering the touches of when she was younger. _“If you do not want me to touch you then you must stop me from doing so.” Twelve-year-old Natalia pushed his hand away, and Ivan smacked her across the face. Then he pulled her in close, pressing her body against his, and she pummeled her hands against his chest, stomped hard on his foot. He only laughed and held her tighter until her teeth sank into the flesh of his arm. The taste of blood filled her mouth._

“I would never,” Natasha replied. It was a new memory to add to her growing collection. They were not lost, just—needed the dust blown off of them. Nor did it affect her decision in coming here.

“Natasha Romanoff,” Ivan mused again, returning to the kitchen and stirring the pot on the stove. “They Westernized it.”

“Then I should go back to Natalia,” Natasha said, ignoring the growing ache at the back of her head that developed whenever she tried to associate herself with her previous name.

He shook his head. “ _Nyet_ , it will serve you well this way.”

She nodded, unsure of whether to be glad or disappointed. Finally, she asked, “What now, Ivan?”

“Now I teach you what you need to know about the new world,” he responded, “and where to find a market for your skills. Your days of blind patriotism are over, Natasha. The system has failed both of us, left us out in the cold. But what they have forgotten is that here is where we operate best. Where we thrive.” He placed his thin hand over hers, and she resisted the urge to flinch away. “It’s time to begin anew.”

* * *

Ivan returned from Moscow proper with a large box of books in his arms. “For you, Natasha,” he presented them to her, setting the box on the table. She stood up from tending a potted plant on the counter, discarding the last of the brown leaves she had plucked. “You know that is _tsuga_ , yes? A slow-acting poison.” He smiled, a gold tooth she hadn’t noticed before glinting in the dim yellow light emitted by the bare bulb on the ceiling. “Make some tea with it in that old rusty pot, would you, Natushka?”

“Yes, Ivan,” she nodded automatically. She pulled the pot out from under the counter and filled it with water at the sink before placing iron the stove to boil. At his beckon, she joined him at the table.

“Go on,” Ivan encouraged, patting the edge of the box.

Natasha pulled the first book out. _Computers for Dummies_. The second, _Advances of the Modern Age_. She set the books on the table one at a time, a total of six, all with technology-related titles. At the bottom of the box was a flat, rectangular black box, which Natasha recognized as electronic. Ivan pulled it it and opened the lid with a subtle click, revealing a screen and a keyboard. “A laptop computer,” he announced. “Portable. Powerful. Capable of storing pictures, videos, documents, and sound files, accessing any sort of information publicly available on the Internet, and communicating with other such devices all over the globe.”

“They had computers at the Red Room,” Natasha murmured. “But none this compact.”

“They are the devices of the future,” Ivan told her. “If you are going to be successful, you must have an intimate knowledge of them.”

“Successful at what, Ivan?” Natasha asked. He pressed a button and the laptop began to to white and the screen lit up.

“I won’t have you throwing away your education, Natasha. You’ll do what you were trained to. What you’re good at. The best.”

“But I left them.”

“Not for Russia, no, that part of your life is over. Russia is currently too fragmented to truly utilize your full potential. But there are others, others willing to pay large sums for your unique skill set.”

“But what would I…would I do with that money?” she asked.

Ivan smiled. “Change the world.” He must have sensed her hesitation as he placed a bony hand on her shoulder. “Do not worry, Natushka, I will teach you as I did when you were a child no higher than my waist. We will start slow. There are ways in which the world has changed since you knew it, but there are even more ways in which it has remained exactly the same.” Natasha nodded, accepting his words as fact. “First we must amass some funds from smaller jobs for the proper equipment—equipment one cannot buy in any store.”

“Why did they change?” Natasha said suddenly. “And why do I remember it now? I think they have done it before, but I didn’t know the difference then.”

“You remember it?” Ivan cocked his head, sidling closer to her. “Describe it to me.”

She shifted, uncomfortable. The Room had not liked unscientific descriptions; subjectivity in anything was punished. And Ivan had once been part of the Room. But he had asked, and she could give no other answer. “Some memories are too bright and colorful, and those are the ones I think they changed. Some I can’t even access at all. And others are muted from as long as I can remember…that’s how I know they’ve done this to me before,” she revealed.

“Yes, they have,” he nodded. “It was common practice with the best students, to keep them from picking up and retaining any undesirable traits. But as to why you became aware of it this time…” He paused, considering it carefully. “There was no Black Widow more powerful before you. I invented the serum they used, based loosely on the work of the German Dr. Erskine, and it is a fairly recent development in the Red Room. They never gave me enough time to perfect it, but I would imagine at some dosage you might build up a resistance to the drugs they use during the conditioning process that help you forget it ever happened.” At Natasha’s look, he nodded. “Oh yes, physical torment to make the mind susceptible and the drugs to make it stick. Another explanation is that they simply used the procedure too often, and you developed an immunity on your own.”

“They made a mistake.”

“Yes.”

“But the Room doesn’t make mistakes,” she said.

Ivan laughed. “No, they just do not admit them. You must look _past_ your conditioning now, Natasha.”

“Yes, Ivan,” she dipped her head. She was silent for a moment, and then: “Ivan, may I go to the bathroom?”

He looked at her consideringly. “No, you shall wait a while longer. I fear your self control may have waned after they removed me from my post. Remember: mind over body.”

She shifted in her seat. “Yes, Ivan.” _Mind over body. Honor, duty, sacrifice. Love is for children. We is greater than I._

* * *

_On June 12, 1987 at the Brandenburg Gate in West Germany, then-American President Ronald Reagan called for German reunification. “Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” In November 1989, Gorbachev allowed the Berlin Wall to be opened. That week, tens of thousands of East Berliners crossed into West Berlin and shortly thereafter, free travel began between the two. Struggles against Soviet control in the Baltic, Central Asia, and the Caucasus continued, leading to a coup in 1991 that collapsed within two days but greatly decreased Gorbachev’s political power. The Communist Party, compromised by its participation in the coup, collapsed as a political force. The Soviet Union itself ceased to exist in 1991 and Gorbachev left office, creating the Commonwealth of Independent—_

“The Soviet Union is gone?” Natasha asked, looking up suddenly from the book. Ivan stood up from the table where he had been tinkering and sidled over to her with a light laugh.

“Nine years now,” he smiled at her. “As I said, you’ve much to readjust to, Natushka.”

“But…but how could it just—” she looked down at the book again, “—cease to exist?”

He shook his head, still wearing that father-scolding-a-small-child smile. “I have always told you: there is no gambling like politics. It is something you should watch carefully like one watches an adder, but do not be particularly alarmed by the way the wind blows at the current moment. It is always reversed again.” He placed a thin hand on her shoulder. “Just memorize what you need and move on, Natalia. Do not concern yourself with it.” Her eyes squeezed shut at the sudden burst of pain in her head at the mention of her previous name, but he did not seem to notice. “Do you remember where that quote came from?”

“Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister,” she replied dutifully.

He released her. “Good. Continue.” He walked back to the table and sat down again. “In half an hour, we shall do something more interesting. Practice your aim, perhaps?”

She returned her attention to the book. _Boris Yeltsin emerged as the strongest leader within the new commonwealth. His popularity was high in both Russia and the surrounding states in 1992, but within a year he faced severe economic and political problems. Though supported by the military and the major Western powers, including the United States, Parliament opposed him and his policies of reform, and attempted to depose him in 1993 but ultimately failed. Though the Soviet economy was dismantled, the result was the creation of enormously wealthy individuals whom the press dubbed “the oligarchs.” While they amassed vast wealth, the Russian economy remained stagnant and defaulted on its international debt payments in 1998 and political assassinations occurred. Due to these developments and his declining health, Boris Yeltsin resigned. His successor was Vladimir Putin._

The computer chimed, jerking Natasha from the history lesson. Her eyes met Ivan’s cross the room before both of them stood up. He reached it first and lifted the lid, and Natasha stood by his shoulder to see the contract come in.

Her first contract.

Her first kill order not from the Union.

The Union didn’t exist anymore.

“Times are changing,” Ivan said almost gleefully, turning to look at her. “Are you ready to meet them?” He pushed the laptop towards her, gesturing towards the cursor which was hovering over the ‘Accept’ button. “You have worked hard for this, Natasha. It’s time to make a name for yourself outside of Russia, with those who will properly recognize your skills.”

“Proper recognition being a million American dollars,” Natasha murmured. “And then double that upon proof of death.”

“They left you out in the cold,” his voice slithered into her ear. “But they taught you—I taught you—enough to live in the Arctic. You’re a survivor, Natasha.” He moved her finger onto the touchpad. “So survive.”

 _Click_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah okay that got a little fucked up. Whoops?
> 
> Would love to know what you thought!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha learns the true identity of Yulian Kostov and discovers the Moscow PD may have information about Barton’s disappearance.

_Despite Bobbi’s warning, Natasha went back to the hospital to finish her interrogation of Polzin, the roommate of the man she fought on Barton’s balcony. It didn’t start exactly as planned._

Present.

She held out her hand and he obligingly dropped the badge into it. It was heavy—made of actual metal—and gold, with a crest in the middle and the city above it, a badge number below it. Wordlessly she set it back down on the tray, pulling out her phone and opening the texting application. She selected Bobbi, lips tightening for a split second as her fingers ghosted over Clint’s name. _Identity check: Yulian Kostov, Moscow PD._ She let the phone fall to her side, glaring suspiciously at Kostov. “Why should I believe you? There’s a black market for fake badges bigger than the Kremlin.”

“Because I will tell you everything,” Kostov answered. “Despite what you have done to me.” He made a vague gesture all over himself. “And then maybe we can help each other.”

 _Running it now. Hello to you too,_ came Bobbi’s reply. Natasha glanced at it silently before returning her attention to the man in front of her. She kept her face expressionless. “Then start telling.”

His lips quirked upwards. “You are good, Miss Romanoff, my injuries are proof of that, but they did not mention you might also have a funny streak to you.”

“ _Agent_ Romanoff. And they can and will be added to if you don’t give me good reason to leave your tongue whole in your mouth.”

Kostov gave her an approving look, unfazed by the threat. “I was working undercover for the Moscow police with an up-and-coming crew in the slums. I was able to ingratiate myself to one of them, so when they all relocated to Lobnya I went with them. They were involved in a large human trafficking network that has sprung up across Russia and into Europe. In particular, girls from orphanages in low income areas.”

“So you’re claiming you have nothing to do with Barton’s kidnapping,” Natasha said coldly. A human trafficking ring, though deplorable, was not what she was looking for.

He shook his head. “I don’t. But I was briefed that I should be expecting you.”

“Then why go through the interrogation?” Natasha demanded suspiciously. “If you were undercover, why didn’t you save yourself the beating?”

He smiled. “I’m not sure you would have stopped, Miss Romanoff. But that’s beside the point. I was in character. I needed to keep you interested. The ring might have been my target originally, but you—” He stopped with a gurgle as the cool steel of her blade pressed against his jugular.

Natasha’s phone gave a slight vibration and she looked down at it. _Employment confirmed. Works for Moscow PD, S.H.I.E.L.D. files indicate he may work undercover. Clear skies?_

 _Clear skies,_ she typed back with her left thumb before pressing the knife against his neck even harder.

“—were who we really wanted to meet,” he ground out.

“Why?” she threatened.

“Because the Kremlin wants to help.”

She released him, slipping the knife back into its sheath and crossing her arms. “In my experience, the Kremlin isn’t particularly helpful. And definitely not without expecting something in return.”

He cracked a smile. “Your experience is correct. It also shouldn’t surprise you, then, that they’re not huge fans of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Not a surprise, no,” Natasha said. “Russia’s never liked international interference within its borders.”

“Ostensibly, that is their reason,” Kostov nodded. “However, it’s a bit more complicated. They look with envy upon the United States, because it has the Avengers.”

“The Avengers are enlisted by S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she told him curtly. “They’re just as international as it is.”

“And yet, the only city they have yet saved is the most well-known in _America_ ,” he replied.

“Well, should St. Petersburg get invaded by aliens, they can join the club,” Natasha said icily.

Kostov nodded. “I thought you might say something along those lines. But you cannot deny there is still something irrevocably American about them. Tony Stark, a man who has been supplying the U.S. government with missiles for more than a decade, some of which are undoubtedly pointed towards Russia this very second. Your Clint Barton, a backcountry patriot if I ever saw one. Dr. Bruce Banner was working on a project for the United States Air Force when his unfortunate accident occurred. As for Thor…the only places on Earth he has ever visited are New Mexico and New York—hardly a global experience. And I need not do more than mention the man they named ‘Captain America.’”

“To be fair, when he was named that, the U.S. was fighting a war with Russia as its ally,” Natasha pointed out, more to maintain her composure than anything. She could see where he was going with this, and her lips pressed themselves into a thin line.

“You, Natasha Romanoff, are the only one with the vaguest connections to the rest of the world, and in this case the connection is more than vague, and to us: your homeland.”

“I have no latent affection for Russia,” Natasha said coldly.

“You have not been treated very well by us in the past,” Kostov nodded. “But this is a new Russia, in a new age. One where special people like you are valued, not mistreated.”

“Too little too late,” she replied back in a clipped tone. “I didn’t have to be a special person. I wasn’t supposed to be. I didn’t _choose_ to be.” Her eyes flashed. “I _never_ would have chosen to be. All I did was choose to survive. Mother Russia did the rest.” She said the last part mockingly, determined he understand the depth of her… Natasha didn’t really have a word for it, really. It wasn’t hatred—she was Russian, she would always be Russian, she wasn’t denying that nor did she wish to change her heritage—but something akin to anger mixed with with a dash of confusion and two opposites: pride and guilt. For now she decided to call it frustration.

“And those in power recognize that,” Kostov told her, holding her gaze. “The program that trained you, that created the Black Widow…a massive oversight and utterly reprehensible.”

She raised an eyebrow. “The government of Russia, admitting its own mistake?”

Now he had the decency to lower his gaze. “Not publicly, no. But if you were to sign on, Putin has made it known in the back channels that he would be willing to meet with you one-on-one—provided you pass the security check.” One corner of his lips quirked upwards. “We’re not really looking for another regime change, Agent Romanoff.”

“I’ll bet he’s not,” she muttered. “I have no interest in an apology in the shadows or in the light. I just want to complete my mission. How will Russia help with _that_ , as you claim?”

“I will show you, if you come with me,” Kostov said, shifting in his hospital bed to reach the call button with a grimace.

She narrowed her eyes. “Where?”

“My precinct.” He was cut off from saying anything more as the nurse came in wearing blue scrubs. He gave her directions quietly in rapid-fire Russian, showing her his badge when she tried to interrupt. Eventually she nodded, leaving from what Natasha surmised to go fetch a wheelchair. She had to admit she was impressed by Kostov’s pain tolerance—his eyes were unclouded by high-intensity drugs, even with the beating she had given him the day before. And, though on principle she trusted no one, it seemed that he bore her no ill will.

Natasha didn’t trust people who forgave that easily, also on principle.

She said nothing else as the nurse returned with a high-backed wheelchair, the woman from before trailing along behind her angrily. Natasha’s defenses immediately shot upward at the sight of the woman who had slapped her—she would not be caught by surprise like that again—but quickly identified the hatred smoldering in her eyes as she looked from Natasha to Kostov. She was his wife. Protective.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she pulled it out, keeping the sight of the woman helping her husband into the wheelchair in her peripheral vision. The text was from Bobbi. _When you get a chance - what’s going on?_

Her fingers flew across the keys at sixty words per minute, hitting send a split second before shutting off the screen. _Kremlin has offered assistance through Moscow PD. Heading to precinct. Stand by._

Her reply was almost immediate. _When should I bring in the cavalry if I don’t hear from you?_

Natasha paused before typing back. _You think they’ll try to kidnap me?_

 _No, we could never ever be betrayed by the oh-so-friendly Russians,_ came Bobbi’s snippy reply.

_I can handle myself. No cavalry. The Avengers are a battering ram. All brute force, no finesse. You know I prefer to use a lock pick._

_And if you need a sledgehammer?_

_You’ll bring in S.H.I.E.L.D._

There was a long pause before another text finally appeared. _I hope you know what you’re doing, Tasha._ She slid her phone back into her pocket, indicating with a nod to Kostov that she was ready to go when he was. Now situated in a wheelchair, Kostov gave his wife a lingering kiss before sending her away with a few insistent waves of his hands. She left with one last glowering, _warning_ glare at Natasha.

* * *

The precinct was a low, gray, brooding building in the center of Moscow, the epitome of the function-based Soviet architectural style. The door was tall, almost reaching the eaves, and Kostov wisely did not linger behind to hold the door open for her but rather moved ahead swiftly and with purpose despite his injuries. She followed him inside with eyes darting from the bare walls do the large security camera mounted in the corner. Directly in front of them, blocking their access to the rest of the building, was a security desk that Kostov wheeled himself towards without hesitation. He flashed his badge at the burly man seated behind it. “She’s with me,” Kostov announced, wheeling past the desk through the metal detector. It went off with a shrill shriek but the officer waved him through with a bored expression, eyes latching onto Natasha under heavy brows. She stepped through the rectangular frame to a second round of ringing alarm bells and immediately the guard stood up.

“Стоп!” _Stop!_

Kostov spun around. “She’s with me, Gurin,” he repeated.

“She has weapons. She will have to leave them here.”

“No,” Natasha said to Kostov, placing a hand on her semi-hidden gun warningly.

“Again, please do not make this a situation from which our relations cannot return,” he said in an even tone. He looked at the guard, expression one of authority. “Gurin, she is from the Kremlin.”

“Then let her show her badge and be done with it,” the guard replied stonily. Natasha surreptitiously readied for a fight, assessing the exits and deciding that the front door would indeed be her best option for escaping capture. Kostov could be easily immobilized with a shattering kick to one of the wheels of his wheelchair, while the guard was best with a slit throat if no reinforcements had been called yet—if they had, then a bullet between the eyes would serve just fine.

“She is not the type to have one.” Kostov gave him a hard look.

The guard visibly debated with himself before, finally, “It’s on your head, Kostov.”

Her posture relaxed slightly, but she still was not letting her guard down. “It will be,” Natasha said clearly, stepping past the guard.

“I apologize,” Kostov said to her as she reached him. She said nothing. “Come with me. We will meet no more resistance.” He eyed her. “And you may take your hand off your weapon now.” He wheeled toward the elevator with her walking behind him. “We both know you don’t need it.” Natasha’s hand reluctantly left the holster of her gone, entering a small elevator with him and finding herself nearly pressed against its wall in order to fit the wheelchair inside. At the press of a button it rock upwards with a groan, as if unused to the wait. To her surprise, faint music played in the background she was not up-to-date enough on her motherland’s contemporary musical culture—besides ballet music—to identify the song. The elevator stopped a single floor above where they had started, the top of the squad building. It opens to reveal men in uniforms behind desks, leading people around in cuffs, writing reports on computers, and in general carrying out the day-to-day business of a police station.

“All right, what have you got?” Natasha asked as Kostov stopped at a desk that was obviously his own, given the picture frame of him and his wife in the corner of it.

“Patience,” Kostov said.

“My partner is missing,” Natasha replied. “I don’t have time for _patience_.”

Shaking his head, he brought the computer on his desk out of sleep and opened up the file explorer, drilling down a dizzying number of folders and subfolders the names of which Natasha dutifully memorized as he went. Finally, he came to two PNG files, each assigned a ten digit case number. He clicked on the first one.

A black-and-white image filled the screen, but even though it was badly lit and shot at a weird angle, she would have recognized him anywhere. Clint.

Natasha’s breathing, instead of hitching, became unnaturally even. “Where did—” She stopped, eyes moving to the timestamp in the corner. “This was _after_ he was taken.” Her eyes flashed. “How long have you known? And why the hell does the Russian government have an image of an unconscious, _missing_ S.H.I.E.L.D. agent sitting around?”

Kostov said nothing, just closed the file and clicked on the next one. This picture was grainier, taken up high from a security camera overlooking the street. A P26 model, by Natasha’s expert judgment, based on the intensity of the low-light artifacts present in the image. She leaned closer, searching for Clint somewhere in the crowd. He wasn’t there.

But, by the fruit stand, off to the side…was that…? She’d certainly seen his face enough, having both a dead drop and a go-locker located there during the entire creation of that exhibit.

Natasha looked at Kostov, voice low and deadly. “What does the Winter Soldier have to do with any of this?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, I love cliffhangers, don't you? :P


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha takes care of Ivan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this chapter is...dark. Good news though, things can only look up for Natasha from here.

_After escaping the Red Room and finding herself in an unfamiliar time period, Natasha ran to an old teacher of hers, Ivan Petrovitch. He began educating her about the changes she missed in the world while still running his questionable experiments with Red Room leftovers._

Past.

“Do you remember, Natasha, the first time you disobeyed me?” Ivan asked, looking up at her from across the room, today’s _Novata Gazeta_ open on his lap and a cup of tea complete with milk and sugar on the table in front of him that he was absentmindedly stirring as he read.

She looked at him over the top of the computer screen. “Of course. It was also the last.”

Ivan gave a short chuckle. “You were a good girl, Natushka. Most of the time. Do you remember the incident? The exact details?” He set the tea spoon down carefully next to the cup.

Frowning slightly, she nodded, wondering where he was going with this. Her stomach muscles fluttered defensively. “It was winter. You told me to inject myself with a small amount of poison, just as we had the week before and the week before that. That time, I refused.”

“Ah, precisely.” Ivan smiled, showing slanted yellow teeth. “Continue.”

“That night, you put a full amount of the poison in my food, so that I could learn why the discomfort of the injections was necessary.” Natasha looked down at her laptop screen. “I nearly died.”

He smiled again, like a teacher delighted with the intelligence of his prized student. “You were too strong-willed to die so easily, even then! But I want to know what you thought of the method.”

“Of the method, Ivan?”

“Yes. When we were together, your abilities were the ones being tested. Mine were not. I would like to know how effective they were.”

Natasha set the laptop down on the table between them. “You have no need to question it. You can see what I have become.”

He waved a hand. “You have had other teachers since they cast me out, Natalia.”

“None like you.”

That seemed to be what he wanted. Ivan smiled. “No, I suppose not.”

“If I may ask, why are you posing these questions to me?” Natasha said.

His eyes glittered. “Once I perfect the formula, the girls will need a good teacher. Perhaps more than one.”

“I know nothing of teaching,” she replied immediately. “They are you project, not mine. I am much more suited to fulfilling the contracts.”

At long last, he nodded, albeit thoughtfully. “Very well. Are there any new ones today?”

“Three. Twenty-four hours to accept or decline.”

“Let’s hear them.”

She picked up the computer again. “Two million to detonate a bomb in the subway of Milan. One-point-five for a hit on a high-ranking military official in Beijing. And three percent on a bank heist in the Cayman Islands.”

“The choice is obvious, then,” Ivan said, appearing satisfied.

“The bomb?” Natasha asked. “It pays the most.”

The smile dropped off his face. He was scandalized. “Natalia, you are not a terrorist.”

“Oh? I kill heads of state for money.”

“You are a scalpel, Natalia! Not a butcher’s knife!” He seemed truly upset now, causing Natasha’s heart to skip forward in her chest. Manic spittle flew from his normally calm mouth. “Have I taught you nothing? You are precise and that is what makes you strong! You are an assassin, Natalia, not a bomber and certainly not a bank robber. You do one thing because that is what you were trained for—what you were trained to control. Bombs, heists—these can be your tools only, but with more than a name and a dollar amount in your head, your vision gets cloudy. You are liable to make mistakes!”

“Ivan, I—”

“I did not train you to make mistakes,” he told her, purpling in the face. “You must know who you are. You must know your own limits. Trying to become something you’re not is how you get killed! You need to be more like me. Calm, collected, and in control—that is what I taught you!”

Something about his statement—the utter hypocrisy of it, perhaps—lit her veins on fire. “You tell me to be like you and then you lose control. You tell me to teach and then to do only what I am good at. You tell me this, but you mean that! Which is it? I am tired of the games, Ivan!”

Blood drained from his face, leaving his skin pale and looking vaguely frost bitten. His coal black eyes were solely unaffected, glinting out of the husk, leering at her as the air took on a chill the likes of which she had not felt in years.

Natasha could not help it. She shrunk back in her seat.

“You want to speak of games, Natalia?” he rasped. “Everything you know is a game. _Life_ is an elaborate game. For you, for me, for humanity… Humans are greedy creatures by nature, we want to be heard, felt, seen. But not by each other…by the universe! We stand on the edge of a precipice and still reach out, out, with our palms open, fingers outstretched, always looking for more, feeling as though we _deserve_ more than the mere miracle that is the fact of our existence in the first place. And when the universe fails to respond in time, we raze continents, despoil the Earth, go to war with each other…” He leaned closer, slithering across the coffee table so that she could see every vein of bloodshot in his eyes. “You do not matter, Natalia. Do you think the universe cares? Do you think _anyone_ cares, anyone to whom you are not currently holding a gun to their head, listening to their last feeble cries for mercy? No.” Their noses were almost touching now. “I alone care for you, Natalia. I have given you shelter. I have taught you everything you know, given you skills that you now use to survive.” He retracted back into himself. “And why do I care for you, Natalia? Because life is a game, and losing is not an option. We play to _win_.”

Natasha finally found the courage to speak. “How do we win, Ivan?”

He smiled, twirling his tea spoon around his finger. “That _is_ the question, isn’t it?”

* * *

Natasha stood at the counter, chopping vegetables with smooth, clean slices. She heard the door open behind her and paused, still grasping the cutting knife. A few seconds later she relaxed again and continued chopping, identifying the footsteps coming toward her as Ivan’s. “How was your trip?” Natasha asked without turning around. She felt him behind her, stiffened as he kissed her cheek.

“Very good,” Ivan smiled, placing two grocery bags on the counter next to her. He gestured back towards the door, and Natasha looked behind her to see a new machine sitting by it, wires and electrodes dangling.

“A new experiment?” she asked, begin for to chop again.

“Yes, a new treatment. I built the machine myself, finally finished with a 9 AMP discharge converter that I ripped out of a hospital EKG.”

It was only after two years of living with her teacher and his experiments that she could understand what he meant. “For me?”

He laughed. “ _Nyet_ , I do not mess with perfection like the stupid Americans, always meddling in things that don’t need to be meddled with in the name of capitalism. You are already my greatest creation, Natasha. There is nothing more I can give you.”

“For the girls then.”

“Not exactly,” Ivan replied. “The new method is incompatible with my previous experiments. I will have to collect some new subjects—perhaps this time you can come with me to the orphanages. I bet you’ll have an eye for the strong ones.” _More girls_. Her knuckles whitened around the knife handle. “At least seven, perhaps ten if they’re scrawny. It’s always good to have a few extra in case the others exsanguinate too quickly. And there are several different variations to my…” Natasha stopped listening to anything but the blood rushing through her ears; her fingernails cut deep grooves into her palms. “…strength of the conditioning against the maladies of the mind that this type of training is likely to trigger, and when we reach the point of full immersion—”

Ivan stopped talking with a gurgle, head falling down slightly to see the knife protruding out of his thin frame, handle still ensconced in Natasha’s firm grip. His knees buckled before her and she went down with him, still gripping the weapon. His eyes found hers and Ivan’s mouth moved infinitesimally. “I always…knew…it would be you.”

She didn’t reply, just stared at the small spot of crimson blossoming on his shirt around the blade. He wasn’t a mark. Not a target. Not a kill order, faithfully executed.

Natasha had done this for herself.

Wrapping her hands around the knife handle, she stood and heaved upwards, tearing it from his flesh. Immediately blood began gushing from the wound, pooling around the body and bathing the edges of her bare feet as she stood there. His head relaxed against the ground.

Unable to focus on anything else, she stared down at the scarlet-soaked knife blade. No ridge. No ridge like ones meant for killing had; that was why it had been so difficult to pull it from his abdomen against the vacuum thrusting it in had created. Pulling it from him had been difficult, but the kill… There had been nothing to it but a simple thought and a quick action.

With a steady hand she rinsed off the knife in the sink and placed it carefully down on the counter. Then, stepping over the body, she crossed over to the bathroom, leaving a trail of bloody footprints as she did so. Nothing of Ivan must survive, not a record or remnant of his madness. Natasha opened the cabinet and rummaged through the man’s supply of black market sleeping pills, coming up with three bottles and a fourth halfway full. She had seen him take them when having a particularly manic episode, knew how powerful they were. Nothing must survive.

She walked back into the kitchen, treating the rapidly cooling body as just another piece of furniture in the large apartment. She crushed the pills with the flat of her blade and distributed the chunky powder into eleven glasses, filling them with water. Then Natasha carried them on the normal meal tray to the trapdoor into the basement.

The first girl barely lifted her head from against the wall when she silently entered, and the peaceful look on her face when Natasha first raised the water to her lips was quickly replaced by fear when the first droplets of the large gulp she had taken hit her tongue. Natasha clamped a hand over the girl’s mouth and nose, forcing her to swallow the bitter concoction. Natasha repeated the process with the other girls, finding that five of them were already stiff and cold in their cramped living space. Ivan must have known he wouldn’t be needing them anymore, used their previous treatment as one last hurrah.

_Nothing must survive._

She closed the trapdoor behind her before surveying the network of bloody footprints criss-crossing Ivan’s floor. Natasha walked to the space of floor where she had slept for the previous two years and pulled out a new outfit, one less homely than Ivan had liked her to wear, and put it on, lacing up her boots underneath it. She threw two handguns and their silencers into her black duffel bag from Ivan’s stash before zipping it up and placing the sniper rifle case up against it. Next she methodically collected a long piece of tubing from under the sink and a bucket, the fact not escaping her that she was now using Ivan’s own tricks over his dead body. Glancing down at herself to make sure no blood spotted her new clothing, she left the apartment and walked to where his car was parked on the street. After popping open the fuel door and unscrewing the cap underneath it, she inserted the tube into the tank, feeding it through until it couldn’t go in any further. She had no other way to start the flow, so she sucked at the other end of the tube, careful to not let any of the gasoline get into her mouth. Coughing at the noxious fumes, she quickly dropped the free end into the bucket, watching as the translucent yellow liquid began to stream into it. The flow tapered off after a few minutes and she removed the tube from the car, closing the fuel door before picking up the bucket.

Back in his apartment she first splashed the body and then dribbled a line of gas through her footprints. She spread the gasoline further around the apartment, distributing it so that every part of it would burn in the inferno. When she had less than a few centimeters’ worth of liquid left, she gathered up all of Ivan’s research notes and threw them down through the trapdoor, pouring the rest of it in after them. Lastly she stood on a chair to take the batteries out of the smoke alarm on the ceiling.

Now nothing _would_ survive.

Natasha surveyed her work one last time, pocketing the cash she could find in the form of paper rubles and adding his laptop to her bag. She moved the duffel and the sniper rifle case to just outside the door, then lit a match from one of the drawers near the sink. She held it still for a moment, watching the small flame flicker around the red bulbous head.

She let it fall, then closed the door.

Bag over one shoulder and case in the other hand, Natasha Romanoff walked away down the street. Wherever she ended up tonight would most likely be seedy and anonymous, but she knew what the first act of her new life would be: washing Ivan’s blood out from between her toes.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha gets the information out of Moscow PD and brings Fury and Bobbi up to speed.

_Working with un undercover Moscow police officer, Natasha discovered another lead on Barton._

Present.

“Ah, you know of him,” Kostov nodded. “So the American intelligence agencies are not as hopeless as they seem.”

“What’s the connection?” Natasha demanded again.

“The Winter Soldier has reappeared, and he only does that when on mission,” Kostov said, looking smug at her obvious interest. “Who else has the skills to pull this off? He reappeared only days before Barton’s kidnapping… It is the opinion of Russian intelligence that this is too big a coincidence to be ignored.”

“I’m not ignoring it,” she said. “But if the Winter Soldier was spotted days before the kidnapping, where did the image of Barton come from?

Kostov clicked the computer mouse, changing the screen back to the image of Barton unconscious. “This photo is a screen capture of about five minutes of video footage we have of Clint Barton before the camera was discovered and deactivated. It was placed on the body of a criminal we have been tracking for a few weeks now, Diana Sokolova. One of our agents covertly placed a body camera on her dry cleaning but she found and deactivated it almost immediately. Luckily there was a second just in case, from which we have these five minutes.”

Too many questions swirled through Natasha’s mind, mixed in with the relief of _finally_ having another lead and the desperation, now that she had it, to put it to use. Who was Diana Sokolova? Where had she moved Barton to now? Was he drugged, or dead? The likelihood was drugged, but Natasha couldn’t bring herself to fall into complete irrationality and cross out the possibility that this mission had been over before it began.

“Who is Diana Sokolova?” Natasha asked. “What intel do you have on her?”

Kostov smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile. “For that, we will need some compensation.”

“Just give it to me,” she growled. “Me asking nicely is compensation enough.”

He slammed his hand on the table—impressive given his injuries—with a face more animated than she had yet seen it. “Compensation not for me, but for Russia! We are tired of S.H.I.E.L.D.—of _America_ —as the sole saviors of the world. Whether it was reprehensible or not, whether you wanted it or not, we _made_ you, Natalia Alianovna Romanova. You are _Russian_.” 

She gazed at him, eyes made of ice. Cold words dropped slowly from her lips. “You will cooperate with S.H.I.E.L.D. You will send all of your relevant intelligence to the S.H.I.E.L.D. base in Moscow. Or I may find myself questioning what little allegiance to the motherland I have left.”

“Putin does not—”

“Putin can go to hell,” Natasha said. “He already has entire divisions of the GRU who can spy for him, who can assassinate for him, who can meddle in elections for him… At best I would be a show pony that he could parade around, and at worst a puppet, a double agent in the Avengers. I’m done being used.” For once, Kostov seemed to shrink under the strength of her contempt-filled glare. “Send the information,” she said again, and walked out.

* * *

“Wow. This is…wow.” Her fellow agent looked up at Natasha, still holding the tablet full of documents in her hands. “And you’ve heard of this _Winter Soldier_ before?”

“Yes,” she said, arms crossed. “He is infamous in certain circles.” Looking into the bright blue eyes of Bobbi Morse, Natasha was tempted to add that her association with the _Zimniy Soldat_ went back a lot further than that, but the moment of temptation was brief. She uncrossed her arms and turned her back to Bobbi instead, resuming the process of packing up the items they’d brought into the safehouse. Unfortunately, the list was not long, and most of it already nestled in her suitcase in anticipation of the need for a quick getaway.

“So, where to?” Bobbi asked after a few moments, still watching her.

“Me? Hunting. You? S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ.” Natasha chanced a look behind her to find an unreadable, almost pitying expression on Bobbi’s face.

“Ha ha, you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

Natasha fixed her with a firm stare. “Two leads, two of us. I will go after the Winter Soldier, you find Sokolova.”

“Yeah, but one of those leads is just breathing down the necks of some poor S.H.I.E.L.D. analysts hoping for a lucky security camera shot. I can’t do anything useful there and you know it.”

“Certainly you’ll be less effective than I am at it,” Natasha said, keeping an indifferent lilt to her voice, as if they weren’t currently waging a battle of wills. “Have you ever considered not being blonde? It’s not really a color that puts fear into the hearts of men.”

“Yeah, tried it once for the intimidation factor but Hunter didn’t like it,” Bobbi muttered. Her eyes narrowed. “But that’s not the poi—”

“Bobbi, it’s okay. This makes the most logical sense. You don’t have to criss-cross continents with me, you don’t have to live out of safehouses for weeks on end. You can go home to Hunter and search for Sokolova at the same time,” Natasha said, taking a step closer to the other woman and hating herself for being desperate enough to try these kinds of tactics on a friend. “It’s okay. I can do this myself. You know I can.” 

“First off, Hunter is not my home. Second, I’m not one of your marks, Tasha, and good thing I’m not because that was a transparent a move as I’ve ever seen you make. Third, I’m not leaving. Natasha, Fury is concerned—no, _I_ am concerned about the possibility of you…” She stopped, looking pained, but pressed onward. “… _losing yourself_.” Bobbi hesitated again, perhaps sensing the dangerous set to Natasha’s mouth, but she was never one to be cowed by intimidation tactics and plowed on. “Clint’s the one who brought you into this mess. I know how much you care about him, and I don’t want to lose you too. And I don’t want to find him having lost you. Maybe you’re not afraid of accidentally going down that road and losing yourself, but I am, and if he were here, Clint would be too.”

There was silence at the moment, Natasha weighing her words carefully before letting them drop like lead weights from her mouth. “I’m not afraid that I’ll lose myself. I’m afraid that it might be necessary.”

Bobbi looked at her. “And afraid I’ll stop you?”

Natasha broke eye contact. “Like I said. It’s better for everyone if you just go back home.”

“It’s not better for Clint.” She paused. Natasha still refused to meet her gaze. “You know that, Natasha. So unless you’re going to knock me out, tie me up, and disappear into the Great White North, I’m coming with you.”

A small smile played at the corner of Natasha’s lips. “I could, you know.”

Sensing victory, Bobbi smiled, knocking Natasha’s shoulder with her own. “Nah, never been proven.”

“Also—the Great White North is Canada, not Russia.”

“…Damn.” Bobbi shrugged ruefully, then proffered the tablet to Natasha. “Do you want me to talk to Fury, or should we talk to him together?”

“Together,” she said. “We wouldn’t want him to think I was off somewhere…how did you put it so eloquently?… _losing myself_.”

“Tasha.”

“I know, I know. You fucking care about me or something.”

“Mmhmm.”

“You know, in this business, that’s how you get killed.”

“Or, how Clint gets rescued.” Bobbi lifted the tablet. “Come on, let’s get this over with, and then work on getting Barton.”

Natasha nodded her acquiescence, letting Bobbi set up the secure video chat. To Fury’s credit, he answered within one ring. She supposed that happened when one of your best agents was missing. Either that or the world ending scenarios taking place all over the world that usually took up his time were especially light for a Tuesday. “Director Fury,” she greeted him. Bobbi repeated the words after her.

“Agent Romanoff, Agent Morse. You have news?” Grim and one-eyed as ever, Fury placed his forearms on the table as he leaned closer to the video feed.

“Two leads. I’m sending everything we have to you now,” Bobbi told him. They were silent as they let him peruse it, his expression giving away nothing. When he was done, he looked up at them again.

“Have you given any more thought into bringing in the Avengers on this?” Natasha’s teeth clenched, bloodying the inside of her cheek.

“This is a sensitive investigation. The team is still untested. I won’t risk it,” she said, keeping her voice perfectly calm with intense effort. “He is _my_ partner. If I fail to find him—if I fail to bring him home—that’s on _me_. We don’t owe anything to a team we were part of for all of six minutes.” Her mouth snapped closed on the venom spewing from it.

“Your opinion is acknowledged, Agent Romanoff. What can you tell me of Diana Sokolova or the Winter Soldier?”

“We have no intel on Sokolova beyond what the Russians gave us,” she replied. “Our best bet is probably S.H.I.E.L.D.’s intelligence network working in conjunction with the analyst division. As for the Winter Soldier…you remember the Odessa mission? Operation Great Glass Sea?” Fury nodded, a quick jut of his chin. “Then you know he will not be caught on any easily accessible security cameras. We don’t have the resources to check the corners of every image on six continents in real-time, so we’ll track him the traditional way.”

Fury raised an eyebrow. “And how do you plan to do that?”

“Backtrack his steps, start from where we know he was and work from there. Profile him, figure out his next steps from getting inside his mind.”

“Then you should bring in Cap.”

Her expression hardened. “I already told you: I don’t play well with others. That was always Barton and you know it.”

“He is probably the most valuable asset you could have in this search. You know that, Romanoff.”

“He’s also the most emotionally invested, and thus the most volatile. He’s not coming near this operation until I’ve run out of other options. Also, on the quite likely chance we will have to work with the Russians again for intel on either the Soldier or Sokolova, I’m certain we are better off not carting around a man with the nickname _Captain America_ on this little venture.”

“Point taken,” Fury said in a clipped voice. “I will have every available analyst and intelligence asset with high enough clearance on this immediately. Keep me updated on your end.”

“Will do, sir,” Bobbi nodded. The video feed ended. The other woman looked at Natasha. “Okay, spill. Odessa?”

She crossed her arms. “The Winter Soldier used to be a ghost story. Most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists, though the ones that do credit him with over two dozen assassinations over the last fifty years.”

“Only two dozen, over fifty years? That’s…little, compared to what you came in with,” Bobbi said, a strained lightness to her voice.

Natasha fixed her with a cold stare. “That only means he’s good. Or particular.” She paused, taking a steadying breath. “A ghost story—that used to be what S.H.I.E.L.D. thought of him too, given the unlikely fifty-year timeline of the hits. Until I ran into him in Odessa three years ago, and convinced Fury otherwise.”

“Ran into him?” Bobbi repeated, one eyebrow raised.

“I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran for Operation Great Glass Sea. He shot out my tires and we went straight over a cliff. I pulled the engineer out of the burning wreckage, but not before the Soldier arrived. I placed myself between him and his mark, so he shot straight through me. A bullet to the man’s head.” Bobbi’s eyes tracked the movement of her fingers to the place the scar from that incident was covered by her shirt, and Natasha let her.

“Describe him,” Bobbi said, dragging her eyes back up to Natasha’s face.

“Three years ago…he wore a mask, but not over his eyes. His mouth. And kohl from his eyebrows to his cheekbones, all around his eyes. Dark brown hair to just above his shoulders. Six feet.”

“Eye color?”

A pair of pale blue eyes swam hazily in front of her vision, the rest of him blanketed by the darkness in the room. Soulless. Or maybe that was just the weight of expectation permeating the space, the nervous thumping of her heart…

“Blue,” Natasha said firmly, closing her mind against the memory. 

“And Steve Rogers? Why would Fury want to bring him in on this?”

“Because the Winter Soldier’s true identity is James Buchanan Barnes, Rogers’s best friend from World War II, thought to have died from a fall off a train over sixty years ago. I made the connection from one of my dead drops within the Smithsonian. The first time I went to check on it after Odessa, I saw the Howling Commandos exhibit—and I knew.”

“Even under all the mask and makeup?” Bobbi frowned. “That’s coverage of seventy, seventy-fivepercent of his face. You’re good, Tasha, but you’re not that good.”

Natasha pursed her lips, her mouth tightening into a thin line. “Sometimes I wish you weren’t so sharp, Bobbi.” The other agent waited, a muscle jumping in her cheek like a repressed smile fighting to make an appearance. In lieu of continuing, Natasha instead picked up one of the handguns off the bedspread, unloading it and disassembling it before piecing it back together. All of that took fifteen seconds. “The first time I met the Winter Soldier, I was still being trained in Russia. I didn’t connect him to the assassin until I researched his style after Odessa and came across that name again. Only after that did I make the connection to Barnes.”

“So he works for the Russians? Or was hired by them at one point?”

“We could never trace a money trail to any of his hits. It doesn’t rule out him being a contract killer, but with all of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s manpower… I doubt it. We also can’t find any motive or proof that he’s a vigilante, killing for his own beliefs. So it is my current assumption that some group—or some _one_ —is running him. And not necessarily Russia, given the current cooperation of their government in giving us this intel.”

“So he has fifty years of experience, is dangerous enough to have put a bullet through the Black Widow, and could be anywhere,” Bobbi said. She slung the first backpack that Natasha had packed over her shoulder. “Let’s go catch this son of a bitch.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha has a mission in Japan that does not go as expected. The man with the bow might be to blame.

_After destroying Ivan, a deranged scientist with a penchant for running his experiments on young girls like Natalia, Natasha used what he had taught her about being an assassin-for-hire to make it on her own. It’s been two years._

Past.

Nateira Russo scanned the crowd quickly before ducking her head again, shuffling forward with everyone else. The weak midday sun shone above her as she lifted the large black camera from her chest and pretended to snap a picture at the imposing red-gold gates in front of her. Then she was at the security desk, facing two Japanese officials as they scanned her forged press pass and then patted her down for weapons. “Backpack,” one of them demanded, rapping his hand on the table.

“Oh, right,” she smiled, shrugging it off her shoulders and setting it on the desk. The security guard unzipped it and peered inside, removing yet another camera to see what lay underneath it. Then he stuffed the camera back inside and shoved the bag back at her.

“Go through,” he ordered, nodding toward the gates before looking past her to the next reporter or photographer in line. “Next!”

Nateira carried the backpack through in her arms before pausing just beyond the gates to zip it back up and shoulder it again. The security check had been the bottleneck; beyond it the crowd fanned out considerably and gave her some breathing room. Her eyes flicked upwards towards the balcony running around this entire compound, walking with the flow towards the press section. She gradually gravitated towards the side of the roped off area, which she noted had guards posted along it only every twenty-five meters or so.

She lifted the camera again as she paused, pressing a button. The screen of her phone lit up inside the camera body casing, and she brought the bulky cameradownwards again and shaded it, as if examining the picture she had just taken. Instead, she accessed the hit contract, pulling down on the screen to refresh it. Still green. Still a go. She quickly pressed another button to shut the screen off and let the camera fall against her chest again.

Fishing out the little bottle from where it was hidden in her bra, her finger found the trigger and she glanced around casually, looking for someone on whom to use it. The access door she wanted was fast approaching, so she had to find one quickly…

There. Suit, red tie, somewhat overweight and already coughing into a tissue. Plus, he was alone. She sped up slightly until she was next to the the man and discreetly aimed the nozzle upwards at his face. The pepper spray shot out with a small hiss, and within seconds the man was coughing harder, eyes streaming and face turning red. She nudged him slightly towards the rope barrier, and unable to see he staggered into it, taking it down with him when he tripped.

“Sir!” Immediately the nearest two guards ran over to see what was the matter. “ _Nani ga mondaidesu ka_? Sir?” Nateira slipped past them and to the access door, touching the badge she had stolen off him in the commotion to the scanner. The door popped open and she slipped through it, entering an empty hallway. She turned left to find a way to the upper floors, only to find her way once again blocked.

Two men stood in front of the stairwell with their hands on their guns, drawing them in warning as Nateira approached. “Excuse me, do you know where I might find a powder room?” she asked, walking up with soft, hesitant steps.

They looked at each other and then back at her. “ _Anata wa koko de kyoka sa rete imasen. Modoru_ ,” the one on the right ordered. _You are not allowed here. Go back._

“I’m sorry, I’m just lost,” she continued in that same non-threatening voice. Another step and they let her get too close. She ripped the first man’s gun out of his hand before he could blink, and a second later she hooked her foot under his ankle, unbalancing him and pulling his body in front of hers just in time for the other guard’s bullet to impact. Then she thrust the corpse at him, causing his gun to clatter to the floor. Remarkably unfazed, the Japanese security guard shoved his partner away and took a massive swing at her, but she ducked underneath it and delivered a swift punch to his jaw. He staggered backwards and she followed with a swift kick to the abdomen, almost losing her balance as the tight clothes she wore suddenly restricted her movements. The kick didn’t land quite at his center of mass, but it was enough to do the trick—he slumped against the wall, eyes fluttering closed.

Nateira glanced around to make sure there were no other people witness to the scuffle and then grabbed the first man’s feet, hauling him away from the scene and tucking him in a corner. She did the same to the second man, but first removed his jacket and used it to wipe away as much of the blood from the gunshot as possible. Then she listened carefully for a moment, trying to detect if the sound of the gunshot had created any sort of stir in the crowd outside. Apparently not, their own noise had been enough to mask it.

Good, that would make things easier.

Heading up the stairs and taking them two at a time, Nateira stripped off her dress attire as she went to reveal the black catsuit underneath, knowing that where she was about to go, if she was found wandering around it wouldn’t matter if she looked like an assassin or a lost reporter—the op would be over. She bundled the clothes up in her arms and ducked into a nearby supply closet at the top of the stairs. She stowed the clothing in a corner and checked the time: twelve minutes before the Prime Minister’s speech was scheduled to start. Setting her backpack on the ground, she dug into it underneath the extra camera and extracted two medium-length knives, one of which she slipped into her boot and the other her left sleeve. Next she disassembled the cameras, procuring her gun and its holster as well as her phone from the one around her neck and an extra clip and a silencer from the other. Standing from the crouched position, she stomped on the now empty plastic shells to destroy any evidence that they had once been part of a camera, then belted on the gun and stowed the clip and silencer.

Guise of Nateira Russo the photographer dropped, Natasha headed out of the supply closet and made a mental note of its location relative to the balcony from which the Prime Minister would be speaking. Even without the men in dark suits and sunglasses dotting it, the balcony was easily recognizable from anywhere in the compound due to the white flags blotted with a red circle hanging down from it and fluttering in the slight breeze.

The men in suits were his security, Natasha had no doubt. Getting in at the last minute had precluded finding a way to circumvent the security force, meaning there was no way to get a sniper rifle inside. That meant she would have to get close.

She started toward it at a brisk pace, occasionally chancing a glance over the edge of the balcony to check that nothing seemed amiss with the crowd below, but mostly sticking low to the wall on the other side to reduce the risk of being seen. Standing up to her full height quickly, she could see another two guards up ahead before crouching down again and moving swiftly towards them. She ducked into a side hallway and stood straight again with her back against the wall, then peeked out.

Her eyebrows furrowed. Hadn’t there been two guards ten seconds ago? Maybe they were ill-trained, and one of them had decided now was a good time for a bathroom break. She pressed herself back against the wall again, removing her gun from its holster and screwing on the silencer. She gripped it tightly, then looked out again. No guards at all.

Alarm bells were definitely ringing in Natasha’s head now. Someone else was taking out the guards. Someone who was probably trying to steal her hit—or that bastard Hoi Chen who had hired her had a second contract drawn up with another mercenary behind her back.

Either way, that someone else was ahead of her. And the Black Widow did not fail to complete contracts.

Nor did she have a problem taking out other mercs trying to swoop in on her jobs.

Throwing caution to the wind a bit, Natasha dashed out of her hiding spot and ran quickly along the wall of the corridor, gun pointed at the floor but ready to rise at a moment’s notice. Her heartbeat picked up, not from the exertion but from the tension—it wasn’t often she got to participate in a chase or a game of hide-and-seek on an op. Usually that meant sloppy work if she had to resort to that. But today…

Natasha slipped into another side hallway as she caught sight of her competition ahead. She counted to three and then looked out again, trying to ascertain what—or perhaps who, if he had a reputation in her business—she was dealing with.

The man had short-cropped sandy brown hair and moved like a spy with fast-paced yet quiet steps. He had some sort of abnormal weapon slung across his back, but the color blended with his tac vest and she couldn’t make out what it was at this distance. Then he turned around and she whipped backwards behind the edge of the wall again. He couldn’t possibly have heard her tailing him, could he? To hear footsteps as silent as hers…

Either way, Natasha couldn’t run the risk that her position was compromised. She took off running down whatever hallway she was in, glancing back at the end of it to see the man in hot pursuit. She turned quickly to the right into a second corridor, skidding to a stop and listening to his footfalls—no longer light—coming closer. She stuck out her leg and he crashed over it, sprawling on the ground but rolling away from her before she could regain her balance enough to attack him. He pressed a hand to his ear. “Bobbi! Found the target, or she found me. I need assistance, northeast corridor!”

She leapt spritely over his body and stomped that part of his face, causing the earpiece to fall out onto the ground. His hands wrapped around her ankle and she came crashing down as well, and he launched himself up and away from her with a grunt of pain. By some miracle—no, there were no miracles—by her own skill she had managed to keep hold of her gun, and now she raised it to fire. The man anticipated her action and ducked before the bullet had even left the barrel. He snapped something off his back, a bow, and swiped forwards with it, knocking the gun out of her hands. He pulled an arrow from his quiver and nocked it. Who did he think he was, Robin Hood?

She launched herself towards him, all too aware that soon whoever this “Bobbi” was would likely be joining him, and she liked her odds better as they were now. Natasha slammed into him with the full force of her body, knocking them both to the ground and snapping the arrow, though the bow remained unharmed in his grip. Immediately the man’s free hand found her throat and began to squeeze, and it occurred to her that he was definitely a professional. He wasn’t trying to block off air, a rookie mistake—he was cutting off blood flow to her brain.

Natasha kneed him between the legs and rolled sideways, trying to gain time for her head to clear. They both rose to their feet at the same time and she tried a swift uppercut towards his chin, only to have him catch her wrist and twist it to the side. Pain lanced up her arm but she ignored it, simply using the other to smash across his face. Somehow his arm tightened around her abdomen, nearly flipping her, but she managed to twist out of his grip, landing on her palms. Her right wrist gave way and she crashed onto her elbow, but was able to use her momentum to wrap her ankles around his calf and spin herself out of his range of motion. She leapt upward, landing squarely on two feet, and before she could recover at all she was ducking under his side cut and dodging his punch. His eyes alighted on her injured wrist which was just beginning to purple and she was too slow to block his grab of it, sending fiery pain up her arm again.

The red clouding her vision cleared just in time for a blur of movement to catch her eye from behind him, and the only response she could make was to plant massive kick directly in the center of his chest as she ripped her wrist out of his grip. He flew backwards with the force of it into his partner and toppled them both to the ground. The crack of her wrist well and truly snapping rang loud in her ears as air ripped through her lungs from her frenzied breathing, trying to get as much oxygen as possible into her bloodstream before facing her now two enemies. She could only assume the woman was as skilled as her partner.

The newcomer pushed him to his feet before leaping to hers, holding two metal poles—staves—at the ready. Natasha sized her up quickly. Though the man had been close to her size, the woman had a good inch on her and was sturdily built. She wore a black and grey tac suit that somehow made Natasha think these two might not be mercenaries.

Government. International, as neither of these two looked remotely Japanese and were too specialized to be CIA or MI6. Interpol agents were _never_ this good. United Nations didn’t run operatives, so… Rumors on the darkweb came back to her. Rumors of an organization called S.H.I.E.L.D.

The man nocked another arrow and she stepped out of the way reflexively, the fight resuming. Natasha responded with a spinning kick followed by an undercut designed to take the two of them to the floor, but they both managed to avoid her. The woman slashed with one stave, narrowly missing Natasha’s shoulder, but the cost of evading the swinging metal turned out to be the kick her partner delivered to her stomach, knocking her backward a few steps.

She coughed, doubling over more than necessary, and started backing away, luring them towards her. The woman fell for it, approaching with staves swinging, but Natasha easily ducked under them and came up behind her. She slammed the woman into the wall before returning her attention to the man, chest smarting. Using his own body as footholds, she launched herself off on him and wrapped her legs around his head, her spin momentum enough to break his neck.

He dropped to all fours immediately but not in the way she wanted. His bow clattered to the ground as the force of his fall ripped her forward and off of him, pounding her flat on her back into the ground with his head inches from hers. It was a counter to her deadliest move she hadn’t even known existed, and she lay there stunned for a few precious milliseconds before her muscles would function again. 

She pulled the knife from her boot and flipped over onto her stomach, scuttling away from him and giving her just enough time to get to her feet before he was on her again. They exchanged a rapid flurry of blows, none of which connected, before ending up at a standstill, bow against forearm. She dropped the knife from her right hand into her left underneath in preparation to stab him with it and end this.

The was a clatter of small objects behind her and all of a sudden two rods were pressed into the back of her neck. Electricity arced up her frame, shockwaves of utter pain crackling through her body. Natasha dropped to the floor, muscles spasming and then locking up as the woman removed the staves.

Through the harsh buzzing in her ears, her brain continued to function.

“It’s a good thing I wasn’t touching her directly,” the man said wryly, spitting out a globule of blood. He looked at his partner. “A little warning next time would be appreciated.”

“If I warn you it ruins the point,” the woman replied, looking down at Natasha’s immobile form. Natasha stared back at her defiantly. “She’s a tough one,” she commented. “I’ve knocked out guys three times her size with a zap like that.”

“They don’t call her the Black Widow for nothing,” the man responded grimly. The woman collected Natasha’s gun from where it lay on the floor and pointed it at her head. Her blue eyes betrayed no emotion; it was obvious Natasha’s death would mean nothing to her. And why should it? These two obviously had killed before. Natasha—all assassins—knew what it meant to be nothing more than a mark.

“Wait, don’t,” he said suddenly. The man cast a hand out over the her as if to shield her from his partner’s shot.

Her finger was poised over the trigger; Natasha could see it. Could see her death looming, ready to overtake her. A small tremor ran through her body. “Why?” the woman asked. “Have our orders changed?”

“Yes. I’m changing them,” he said. He reached down and roughly flipped Natasha onto her stomach with a bruising grip. She felt metal restraints being snapped onto her wrists. Her body was still smarting and utterly immobile, her heart jackrabbiting in her chest. “I’ll take responsibility at HQ.”

“I know I’m still a bit fuzzy from getting smashed into the wall and everything, but I thought you just advocated sparing the life of a master assassin contract killer with Soviet ties and eighty-five hits to her name _that we know of_. Who also just tried to kill us both.” The man let Natasha fall back onto her back before removing her boots and fastening cuffs around her ankles as well. The man only gave his partner a look, something silent passing between them. “She’s dangerous,” she said finally.

“I know.” He picked up his earpiece from the ground and slipped it back into his ear. “Target has been taken care of. Requesting extraction plan alpha-one.” The man paused, and Natasha scarcely dared to breathe. It really looked like he was not going to kill her. His loss. “Yes, the threat has been eliminated.” Then he nodded at his partner.

A stave whipped towards her and cracked across her temple.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha gets tortured, just a little bit, and decides to return to the Farmhouse for Christmas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points to anyone who can guess the TV show the beginning part of this chapter was inspired by. It's kind of obscure, unless you were a Castle fan.

_Bobbi and Natasha are on the hunt for the Winter Soldier: former ghost story, former Red Room asset, and formerly known as Bucky Barnes._

Present.  
2012  
Four Months After Barton’s Kidnapping.

Natasha’s head broke the surface for a moment—just a moment. Then she was pushed down again, fat fingers twisting in the wet, matted hair clinging to her scalp. Her face submerged, then her ears, and some carnal part of her body struggled against the dark, oppressive water around her.

_Wasting energy, Natalia…_ Ivan’s voice taunted her, and the contortions ceased almost immediately. Her lungs ached for air but did not quite yet scream for it. She forced her body to go limp, to float. The pressure on the top of her head lessened, and her head broke the top of the water again. Her mouth opened to inhale.

Then the shock came. Lighting up her insides, obliterating all rational thought, setting every single nerve ending on fire. Fighting it was useless; it knocked what little air she had managed to suck in out of her lungs as her body thrashed in spite of itself, falling back into the water in turmoil. Then the pain stopped, as quickly as it had come, and Natasha blinked the blackness in her vision away. Through the grimy walls of the tank, she could see the blurry image of one of the men stand up, waving a hand almost disgustedly. Another hand plunged into the tank and grabbed hold of her hair once again, yanking her upward toward the surface.

Natasha gasped as she broke through, though it took a moment for her lungs to remember how to breathe properly. In, out. In, out. Salt wet her lips.

“She doesn’t look good,” the goon fisting her hair said.

“She is the Widow. She will survive,” the leader replied, dismissiveness coating his tone. “Shock her again.”

The hand holding her up abruptly dropped her, and the cool water enveloped her again. She made a show of scrabbling for the edge of the tank, almost getting one arm over before the electricity stabbed through her again, liquifying her muscles as she flopped like a fish out of water.

When it was over, she kept herself still, floating, eyes half lidded. It wasn’t hard. This far into the abuse, her body was more than happy to fall into its baser instincts—instincts all but wiped out in the Red Room.

_You are made of marble._

She could hear nothing, under the water, and where the shock had left her didn’t allow her to see much but the glass bottom either. She waited, confident they would not risk killing her. Not this soon, anyway.

A hand yanked her upward by the hair again, but she kept herself limp this time, slamming up against the side of the tank hard enough to bruise. The man dragged her head above water but she let it loll, half-submerged. One second for confusion. One second for confusion to turn into concern.

Grip his wrist. Yank.

Her eyes flew open as her hands obeyed her instructions. Halfway through her firm thrust downwards, she kicked off from the side with both feet, pulling the man into the water with her. Another shock lit up her body but she was ready when it stopped, pushing the much-less-prepared man to the bottom and reaching the edge in less than one stroke. Natasha surged out of the water, placing one foot on the glass tank edge before jumping out completely. Another goon cushioned her fall, her knee digging into something soft and fleshy. In another second she was up and moving again, dispatching the next man as more called for backup. A few fled back through the door into the corridor beyond, but most advanced on her, twenty at least. Torturing the Black Widow was a spectator sport with these guys, it appeared.

She ducked the first oncoming blow, then took a different set of legs out with a quick sweep of her own. A fist connected with her side but below the ribs, not even winding her. Natasha responded by leaping upward, wrapping her thighs around another man’s neck—no, a woman this time—and dropping her to the floor. A knife entered her field of vision and she spun away, straight into a kick that did knock some of the hard-won air out of her chest. She tugged the man’s outstretched ankle to unbalance him, then sidestepped to let him and the one smart enough to bring a knife crash into each other. The knife slid in between his ribs, and Natasha smacked its holder to the ground, earning herself a crunched ankle from an unseen attacker from behind.

Her breaths came more raggedly than she would have liked, and that ankle threatened to fail to hold weight as she spun around to face her new assailant. She had a knife too, whipping it towards Natasha’s neck. She caught her wrist and wrenched, pulling the blade from her hand and jabbing it towards the woman’s own throat. Blood spurted out, spattering Natasha’s face and chest. The knife found its home in another two attackers before Natasha was forced to drop it by another well-placed kick. Momentarily down on the ground, a boot impacted with the side of her face, thankfully too high for a dislocated jaw but probably doing some severe damage to her cheekbone. Her teeth snapped closed on the edge of her tongue, and a copper tang invaded her mouth.

And the men kept coming. Kept dying, or getting knocked down. And giving her a small litter of injuries to prove it.

Finally, there were three left. Three of the largest, who apparently liked watching their comrades die before actually engaging. Natasha spat out a mouthful of blood and what was hopefully a clot not a tooth and launched herself toward the first of them. She scaled him swiftly before he could get a grip on her, seating herself on his shoulders and dispatching him with a quick twist of his chin in her hands. He hit the floor and she rolled away, coming up in a crouch. Her eyes sifted through the carnage for a weapon before snapping back to her next target. Seeing none, Natasha exchanged a flurry of hand-to-hand blows with him, ducking and weaving even faster once the other one joined him. A palm-heel-strike caught her in the ribs but she did not go down, trapping the hand that had done it and off-balancing him, slamming him into the side of the water tank. He dropped, dazed at least. Natasha turned immediately away from the tank to deal with the last attacker. A gunshot rang out, and he slumped, dead, to the floor.

For a moment, Bobbi and Natasha stared at each other across a sea of bodies.

“Took you long enough,” Natasha grunted, pressing a hand to her throbbing ribcage. Fractured rib. Maybe two.

“Told you this place was a bad idea.”

“Better than no idea,” Natasha maintained, stepping over the first of the bodies on her way to Bobbi. The adrenaline was fading fast, and the pain from injuries—especially that damn ankle—was mounting. “You look better than me, at least.”

“Perks of working with the Black Widow. You had twenty guys and a water tank. I had two and a loose-fitting pair of metal shackles.”

“Don’t forget they rigged it for electric shocks,” Natasha said dryly, finally reaching her.

Bobbi peered at the tank. “They really pulled out all the stops for you.”

She nodded toward the belt and Widow’s Bite slung over Bobbi’s shoulder. “That my gear?”

“Yeah. Picked it up on the way over.”

“Now I know why it took so long,” Natasha said, but she allowed a hint of a smile to peek through. It dropped off almost immediately, a hand lifting to her cheekbone—smiling hurt.

“Let’s get out of here,” Bobbi said, a look of concern overcoming her features as she took a better look at the other agent. “You need to have that looked at.”

Natasha made a non-committal noise, stumping toward the exit. “Hard drives first. Then back to the Quinjet.”

She didn’t have to look behind her to guess at Bobbi’s exact skeptical look. “Hard drives? In this…water tank dungeon?”

In the end, Bobbi was right, and also the one lugging the large metal filing cabinet out the facility’s main entrance. Natasha begged off on the fact she’d been electro-shocked and nearly drowned all in one day, but it was mostly to hide how much of a beating she’d actually taken. Bobbi wasn’t stupid though—even if Natasha hadn’t tried to play it off, she doubted she ever would have let her carry it herself.

One stealthed Quinjet ride later back to their third safehouse in two weeks, Natasha finally peeled off her soaked tac suit, the material clinging to her and almost threatening to pull her skin off with it. Bobbi watched with feigned impassiveness, the line of her lips tightening as more and more swollen red patches and the dark beginnings of mottled bruises were revealed. Natasha shucked off her boots with the last of her tac suit, perched on the edge of the bed in her bra and underwear. “Ten bucks to continue the show,” she deadpanned, the woman’s gaze stinging her skin.

“Ha ha. You really need to work on your self-preservation instincts.”

“I’m alive.”

“You should have waited for me before making your move.”

“I couldn’t know when you would get there, or how much weaker I would be from hypoxia by then. Or when the men would get tired of their sport.”

“No, you didn’t trust me.” Bobbi sighed. “You shower. I’ll get the med kit.”

“You know I heal fast.”

“I know you have a high pain tolerance and little regard for med bay rules. That’s not the same thing, Tasha,” Bobbi said. “No med bay here, just me. Now…” Bobbi’s sharpened blue gaze darted from Natasha to the bathroom.

“All right,” she nodded her assent, standing and making her way towards her go-bag. She fished out a new pair of underwear and bra to change into when she was done, then went into the bathroom and closed the door. The bathroom was gray and drab, but at least nothing like the brown stone walls of that facility. The bathtub-shower combo also looked nothing like the grimy water tank, even if the porcelain wasn’t entirely white and sparkling. Much as she didn’t want to, she set the tub to its non-draining setting and began filling it with cold water. She opened the mini-fridge stored under the sink for exactly this purpose and withdrew the bucket of ice kept chilled inside, dumping it into the bathwater. She stirred it around with her hand a bit, then climbed in, grimacing at the sudden cold. Leaning back into it so that all of her lower body was submerged, she took a deep breath, forcing away the tremors threatening to overtake her.

In, out. In, out.

Eventually, the water stopped feeling so cold and had taken on a vague reddish-brown color, so Natasha drained it and filled it again. This time she did not sink into it but rather sat, scrubbing the remaining dried blood and salt off her body and out from under her nails. The cold had numbed her to her injuries by now, and her mind a bit dull and sluggish. When she was done, she drained the tub one last time and stepped out, patting herself dry with as much gentleness as she could muster through cold-numbed limbs. She slipped into her underwear and bra with hands that shook slightly with the chill, then stepped up to view her face in the mirror. As it had been submerged the least, her cheekbone was still a nasty swollen red, and would likely be even more inflamed tomorrow if she’d broken it like she thought she had. Dark circles traced around her eyes, but that was more easily covered up. Natasha pulled a brush slowly through her hair, trying to work out the tangles the tank had made while waiting out the worst of the shivering before she went out to face Bobbi.

Not that she fooled her. “I’m guessing you didn’t just take a warm, relaxing shower,” Bobbi said, tracing her thumb over the gooseflesh on Natasha’s arm as she sat down.

“Ice baths speed healing,” she replied evenly.

“Not if you get hypothermia. One tank of cold water not enough for you today?” Bobbi asked, pulling a blanket off the bed and setting it over Natasha’s shoulders despite the redhead’s glare.

“It wasn’t cold, actually. Quite room temperature. I don’t think their plumbing was that good.”

“Never would have expected that from such a high-class group as the Voronezh mafia.” Her expression softened as she began patching up the knife cut on Natasha’s shoulder, her needlework fast and almost painless. Relatively, anyway.

“I’ll do you after,” Natasha said as Bobbi moved on to her ribs.

“I’m fine.” At Natasha’s look—“ _actually_ fine, not your version of fine. Just a few bruises.” She nodded. “I think your ribs are fractured. We’ll need to take a few weeks off to let them heal properly.”

“Two weeks.”

“Tasha…”

“I heal fast,” she reminded her.

“We have a lot of files to go through,” Bobbi said, wrapping bandages tightly around Natasha’s waist. “Maybe…maybe you should head to the farm. Rest and recover while I look through them.”

“I already told you, _no_.”

“That was before you were injured.”

“I’m not going to the farm until Clint is here to go with me,” Natasha said.

“It’s been four months, Natasha!” Bobbi’s eyes flashed. “We haven’t taken a break _once_. And we’re chasing down the _faintest_ of leads…”

“If you need a break, take one,” Natasha said, pushing Bobbi’s hands away.

“That’s not what I said. It’s Christmas, Tasha…their first Christmas without him.” Her heart thudded in her chest.

“He’s been away on an op on Christmas before,” Natasha countered, covering for the cold that pricked her insides that had nothing to do with the ice bath.

“That’s not the same and you know it.” Bobbi took a deep breath, and she knew she was not going to like what she was about to hear. “Yes, Clint needs you, Tasha. He’s out there somewhere and you have to find him. But Laura and the kids need you too. That’s why she called you three days ago and asked you to come home. If he were here, right now, where would he want you to be?”

“Finding him,” Natasha said obstinately. “Just like I told Laura.”

“I’m not asking you to give up the search. I will continue while you’re gone. I’ll scour each and every one of those files. And you will heal better there than you ever could here, and in three weeks, I’ll come pick you up and we’ll be right back to the search. And Cooper and Lila and Laura will have you there to give them hope. She _asked_ for you to come.”

“Hope,” Natasha repeated. Her head dropped down, stomach twisting into knots at the thought of not spending every waking moment looking for Clint. “…Okay. Two weeks. And you keep me updated the whole time.”

“Fine, two weeks,” Bobbi agreed, gently tugging Natasha’s calf forward so that she could have better access to wrap her ankle. “You’re doing the right thing, Tasha. It’s what Clint would want.”

Natasha nodded. “I know. I’ll call her first thing tomorrow.” Bobbi gave a thin-lipped, cheerless smile, taping up the wrapping around her ankle. “And Bobbi?”

“Mm?”

“Thanks.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha wakes up in a S.H.I.E.L.D. cell.

_While attempting to assassinate the Prime Minister of Japan for a client, Natasha was captured by two elite operatives from an agency called S.H.I.E.L.D. with the intention of taking her out. At the last minute, the man with the bow made another call._

Past.

She didn’t really expect to wake. Despite what the man had said—it was a stupid, foolhardy move on his part. She knew it. His partner knew it. And he…judging by the blood still pulsing rapidly through her veins, he did not. Or he had chosen to ignore it for some reason.

For her.

Natasha assessed her surroundings before daring to open her eyes. There was no noise except for a low, barely audible him that told her there were machines nearby, but no people. She was alone. Bright light was present just behind her eyelids, and her spine was pressed into something relatively soft. Metal cuffs about two inches in width—heated to close to the temperature of her skin—held her wrists in place. She’d been in them a while. The air of the room was warm against her face.

When she was ready, she opened her eyes, twisting her head to survey the rest of the room. She was lying on a bed. Experimentally she tugged on her wrist, and she was surprised when it released immediately, cuffs retracting back into the frame of the bed and then disappearing. A white gauzy splint covered the wrist that had been broken; perhaps that was why. But the other was quickly released as well, setting off warning bells in her head. When one was captured, escape was not supposed to be this easy. The Red Room had taught her that by preparing for the absolute worst they could do to her—and pushing her to the brink of it themselves.

Natasha sat up cautiously, slipping her legs over the side to let her feet settle onto the floor. Slip-on sneakers covered them, and she looked down to see that they had dressed her in gray leggings and a white shirt with a slight V-neck and cloth buttons near the top. Smart of them not to give her anything she could grind down to a point, and, she thought grimly—the first smart thing they had done all day. In one corner was a smaller alcove containing a steel basin and sink.

The low hum attracted her attention again as she stood up on steady legs, and she followed her ears across the room to an opaque wall that seemed a shade of white darker than the others. The hum seem to emanate from it, and when she placed her hand against it little spots of orange seemed to glow where her fingers pressed. All of a sudden the wall disappeared altogether, revealing a second room on the other side that housed two chairs and a metal table, all bolted down—no, soldered—to the floor. Directly across from her was a steel door.

It opened, and the man and woman who had captured her walked inside. He was first and her following, his attention immediately focused on studying the caged animal in its new enclosure—as she was sure they considered her—while the woman’s on meticulously making sure the door closed behind them. Natasha pressed her hand into the now invisible wall once more, but what had once been a faint orange glow only intensified in color, but did not give way.

“It’s an inertial confinement laser barrier,” the woman informed her, stopping just to the right of the door and crossing her arms. “Top of the line.” Her expression was hostile and it didn’t take much for Natasha to understand that _top of the line_ in this instance meant _the kind we only break out for people like you_. Well, good. They recognized her strength. They knew how dangerous she was.

_Pride is folly, Natalia, there is only service_ whispered an insidious little voice in her head. The voice was right. Their precautions such as this one would only make it more difficult to escape, and she was beginning to suspect they were more well-equipped to handle one such as her— _there is none in the world such as you, Natalia—_ than she had originally given them credit for. With this in mind, Natasha instead turned her attention to the man, who was approaching her quickly. Her feet remained firmly planted where they were as he came closer and closer and she briefly wondered if it was possible the inertial confinement barrier was only one-sided, but she quickly dismissed that as impossible though she did not know the exact science behind it.

The man stopped just behind the table and she studied him astutely. Unlike his partner, he hadn’t bothered to bring any weapons with him into the room. And he was young. They both were, to be put on such a dangerous mission.

But they were also skilled. Natasha knew that much already.

“Natasha Romanoff,” he addressed her. “I’m Clint Barton.” He gestured back towards the woman. “Bobbi Morse.” She stared him down. At this particular moment she didn’t care what their names were—she was only focused on the best way to kill them and get out of here. “I’ll be handling your interrogation,” he told her. “The more forthcoming you are, the easier this all will go down. Not that I want to make this sound like good-cop, bad-cop, but the people who’ll come after me? They’ll be a lot less nice.” He looked back at Morse. “Actually kind of assholes, really.” She shot him a pointed look out of stern blue eyes and he cleared his throat, turning back to Natasha. “Right. Our boss said to inform you that you’re currently in the custody of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, or S.H.I.E.L.D., and wanted by sixty-three nations worldwide on eighty-five counts of international espionage, one hundred twenty-nine counts of murder, and one of forgery. So far. The analysts out there are still dredging up new numbers. Which means—”

“You have no rights,” Morse cut in. “The only way you’ll ever see real sunlight again is through us.” Natasha said nothing, just waited and kept the brief smirk that statement elicited from appearing on her lips. She knew perfectly well that the only way out was through them. She was, in fact, looking forward to the day she got to shove something _sharp_ through them.

Barton sighed at her continued silence. “Yeah, I wasn’t really expecting you to talk today. I didn’t much my first day either.” She tamped down the little smile. Interrogation step number three: hint that you connect on some level with the prisoner. As if Natasha gave one ruble about his ‘first day.’ “We’ll let you get settled in, be back tomorrow.” Morse gave one knock on the door and it opened inwards, a man in uniform coming in with a tray laden with food. He placed it on the table, giving her a good view of the sidearm on his belt and eagle symbol on his shoulder patch. Looking back at Morse, she could see that eagle stamped on the upper sleeve of her tac suit too. How _American_.

After the man left, Barton nodded at her. “Until tomorrow, Black Widow.” She had a feeling she was going to begin to resent those words—the promise they presented. Then he and Morse walked out as well, and the invisible barrier between her and the next room flickered and then disappeared altogether, nearly unbalancing her. Only her ballet training kept her from toppling forward, and she glared at the door as if Barton or Morse had played the trick on purpose. Cautiously she stepped forward into the other room, curiosity getting the better of her as her stomach gave a loud, insistent grumble. Her abdominal muscles clenched immediately, and for a moment—a brief moment—she was sure she would be punished for such an overt display of weakness. But nothing happened. She wasn’t with the Room anymore.

She touched each of the small packages on the plate. All pre-packaged except the fruit. Did they think she wouldn’t eat it if it wasn’t sealed in plastic first? More importantly, did they think she believed they couldn’t have slipped some sort of drug into it if the plastic still appeared sealed? As much as they were trying to get a read on her, she was trying to profile _them_ just as much. Nevertheless, she couldn’t not eat. She had to stay strong, for now and especially for when they eventually realized—and they would—that a face-to-face word-based interrogation wouldn’t break her. She would need her strength for when the torture began.

But Natasha wasn’t going to be stupid about it. Ignoring the fresh fruit, she went straight for the dried, checking the packaging over meticulously for any signs of a needle puncture. Finding none and the smell to be what she expected it should be, she devoured it quickly before moving on to the next item: bread. When that was gone, there was precious protein in strips of tasteless jerky. The whole time she did not touch the water, knowing it would be the easiest for them to spike. Instead she dumped it in the steel basin they evidently called a toilet—the bottom opened automatically to let the water and waste through—and filled it at the sink. The cool liquid felt good sliding down her throat. She set the cup back down on the tray, having no use for it yet and no desire to tip them off before she even had a plan. Then she retreated back into her cell proper, waiting for the inertial laser whatever barrier to come and cut her off again. It didn’t. It appeared she was free to move about in both rooms for now.

With nothing else to do but mull over her plan for the next few days, Natasha took to exercising the afternoon—she liked to think it was afternoon, though she really had no idea—away. She was careful to follow her training to do strenuous exercises that betrayed neither her true abilities nor in what styles she was taught but still kept her honed and fighting-sharp.

She would remain silent. That was the best way to deal with these people. Until they could make her scream, she would remain silent. And after that the practiced nonsense would start, at first complete trash followed by personas, one daily. Ivan had always enjoyed her grade-school girl charade…

Then again, she did not really want to be thinking about Ivan.

That night, the majority of the lights in the room shut off, and Natasha took that as her cue to slip into the bed. She briefly considered sleeping on the floor or in the corner as an act of defiance, but that would get her about as much as not eating would. The covers were thin but largely unnecessary with the temperature at which they kept her cell. Perhaps it was nothing out of the ordinary to them, but she was Russian. Natasha Romanoff liked the cold.

Her eyes closed. And then she did probably the worst thing possible while in enemy hands, something they’d tried to whip out of her—with actual whips, more than a few times—something of which they told her she should be ashamed, that she was weak, that she was worthless to them. And even though she didn’t work for the Red Room anymore, she couldn’t help but agree with their sentiment. It was dangerous. It was sloppy. It was unacceptable.

Natasha dreamed.

The problem with dreaming was that her subconscious never just played. Like the rest of her, it didn’t know how to play. Natasha didn’t dream of the ‘normal’ things her marks dreamed about, whispered in her ear over hot damp sheets and bare skin. Not of money or riches, not of one last cigarette like the only addict she had ever seduced, not of zombies or aliens or whatever other things that wandered into their minds from the abyss. Her mind didn’t need to create nightmares from nothing. When she dreamed…

_Something tickled her face, and Natalia scrunched up her nose and shifted in her bed. She settled back down to go back to sleep fully and had another few seconds of peace. Then:_

_“Stop it!” she hissed angrily, opening her eyes. The space in front of her was a rippled white thing in the darkness, and when it moved to cover her face again she batted it away with her free hand. The sheet came loose in her grip, billowing down to the floor beside her bed._

_“Natalia?” a tremulous voice asked her from above. “Are you awake? I’m scared.”_

_“Fear is a servant, not a master,” she spouted, burying her face in her pillow. Her voice was muffled as she added, grumpily, “So get over it.”_

_“I can’t,” came the tremulous voice again. “Please, will you help me?”_

_Natalia frowned and glared up at her bunk-mate—_ comrade— _and slid her legs out of bed even as the handcuffs holding her left wrist to the bed frame scraped along the top of it. She stood in her thin nightgown, already beginning to fill the bitter cold of the Russian winter seeping into her bones. The cuffs allowed her just enough leeway to be able to see up into the top bunk if she held her hand extended out towards the bed. Marina’s frightened face peeked downwards at her, green eyes bright and tear-filled._

_That was wrong. Future Black Widows weren’t supposed to cry._

_“What do you need help with?” Natalia whispered, gooseflesh creeping up her bare arms and legs._

_“I—I wet the bed,” Marina whimpered, biting her bottom lip. “I can’t get out and if they find out I’ll be punished again.” Indecision filled her as she glanced around the dormitory, confirming all the other girls were fast asleep. “Please, Natalia…”_

_“Okay,” she said. “Hold on.” Her small fingers grasped the locking mechanism on her cuffs and she slipped her fingernail into the crack, feeling around._ Click _. The cuffs released and she slipped her hand out of them. “Give me your wrist,” Natalia called, clamoring up on her own bed and holding onto the edge of Marina’s above it._

_“Thank you,” the girl whispered, twisting around so that her cuffed wrist was as close to Natalia as she could get it. Once it had released as well, she stepped down onto the cold concrete again and stood back. Marina looked at her._

_“Come on, you have to jump,” Natalia said._

_“But what if I can’t get back up again?”_

_“I’ll help you!”_

_“But what if I hurt something? They’ll know.”_

_“They’re not going to find out,” Natalia whispered. “But you have to come down, or I’m going to go back to bed. Sneaking out is even worse than bed-wetting.”_

_Marina gritted her teeth, staring at the ground below apprehensively. She crept closer to the edge but still appeared entirely unwilling to jump. “I’m scared.”_

_“Fear is a servant, not a master,” Natalia repeated._ Whump! _Marina landed on the floor on all fours, shivering. She stood up and dusted off her hands._

_“I hate those phrases,” she said, giving her a look._

_Natalia leaned closer to her ear. “Me too.” She tilted her head up again to height of the soiled bed. “But it worked, didn’t it?”_

_“Yeah. I guess,” Marina shrugged. “But how do we get the sheets off now?”_

_“Follow my lead,” Natalia replied, climbing up on top of her bed again and reaching up towards Marina’s. She unhooked the sheets in the corner and gestured for Marina to do the same at the other end. Then she grabbed them and jumped backwards, landing lightly on the ground with the bedding in her fist._

_“Thank you,” Marina said again, picking up the other end. The sheets were held between them and did indeed have a dark spot in the middle. Shame colored some of Marina’s features as Natalia looked at her, but she simply nodded._

_“I know where we can stash these and where they keep clean ones,” she told her, beginning to walk quickly towards the door. She opened it softly, peeking outwards into the hallway only to be blinded by the bright white light she found there. She squinted but couldn’t see anyone and slipped through the crack, dragging the bedsheets and Marina along behind her. She broke into a soft run and the other girl followed suit, their bare feet making a little pitter-patter sound on the stone. The hallway was quiet as Natalia pulled open the door to a storage closet, taking the sheets from Marina and stuffing them in the back._

_“How do you know all this?” Marina demanded with admiration. A hint of a smile played at the corners of Natalia’s mouth, but the moment was short-lived as both girls heard the footsteps headed their way at the same time. Her hand slapped against Marina’s mouth a bit too loudly and the sound seemed nearly deafening as the footsteps slowed outside. The shadow was visible beneath the door. Natalia could feel Marina mumbling, “No, no, no—” against her hand as surely as her racing heartbeat because this was it they were going to be caught Ivan would be angry and she would never succeed in becoming the Black Widow and there would be punishments and Natalia had been through punishments before and maybe deep down she was just as scared as Marina and these punishments would finally make her show it and then—_

Natalia—Natasha—bolted upright in bed, eyes wild, pulse hammering in her chest. It took her a minute to identify her surroundings in the darkness, and as soon as she had… S.H.I.E.L.D. She could only hope they hadn’t seen it, that the man in front of the security feeds undoubtedly sprinkled all over her cell had forgotten in his coffee tonight and was passed out in his chair, having missed it all… The thought of going back to sleep brought the taste of bile to her mouth, but she lay back anyways. She had to put up appearances. She had to rest. And what was the likelihood the nightmare would begin right where it left off? It couldn’t. No. She had more control than that. She wasn’t little Natalia hiding in a closet anymore with a handful of soiled sheets—she was the Black Widow.

Or maybe there was more Natalia left in her than she realized.

_The footsteps had receded by the time Natalia slowly dared to let Marina go. The girl was shaking. “I can’t get punished again,” she murmured, eyes filled with fear. “It’s always Ivan who does it and he…and he…”_

_“We’re not going to get caught,” Natalia told her bravely. Somehow a bit of cockiness slipped out, along with a secret she hoped Marina was too distraught to remember in the morning. “_ I’ve _never gotten caught.” She quickly clamped down on the bit of pride that had entered her voice at the statement._ Pride is folly. _“Come on, let’s go.”_

_They made it back to the dormitory without further incident, though Natalia would admit her heart was still beating faster than normal. They hurriedly but quietly put the new sheets onto the bed. Marina stepped up onto Natalia’s while she waited impatiently to slip back under the covers again. “I can’t lift myself!” Marina cried desperately, clinging to the bed frame and attempting to pull herself up. She failed, falling back to the floor._

_Natalia frowned. They couldn’t be found out of bed…Marina was right, that was even worse than bed-wetting. Even at their age. “Stand on my shoulders,” she directed, kneeling down so that Marina could latch onto her. As soon as she tried to stand they both tumbled to the floor in a heap of limbs. The cold concrete leeched heat out of her even faster than the air did, so Natalia scrambled upright. “Try again.” Marina climbed up on her again and this time Natalia managed to stand, her work becoming instantly easier the moment Marina was able to grasp the bed frame and begin trying to hoist herself._

_“Almost—“ the girl murmured. Natalia felt the feet crushing into her shoulders lift slightly, then back down again, and then one moved to push off the top of her head. Marina tumbled onto her own bed as Natalia let out a small yelp of pain before clamping her mouth shut on it. She tasted blood as her tongue was caught between her teeth, but at least Marina was safe. Natalia quickly redid her cuffs before crawling back in her now-cold bed, snuggling deep under the thin covers in an effort to regain her earlier warmth._

_It seemed as though almost no time had passed before every girl in the dormitory was awakened by the sound of the door slamming open and a sudden deluge of light piercing their eyeballs. “Up! I want to see all of you, right now!” They all scrambled out of their beds and stood next to the frames, wrists still attached, while the ones on the top bunk sat up and did their best to look attentive._

_Ivan’s beady black eyes flashed as he stalked between the rows, making furious eye contact with every one of them. He held up damp sheets. “Would any of you like to claim_ these _?”  
He approached the bed across the aisle from them, thrusting the urine-soaked bedding into one of their comrades’ faces. “You, Anastasiya?”_

_“No, Ivan.” She shook her head and tried to look anything but fearful. He took the sheets away and began to walk towards their bunk._

_“You, Marina?” he asked, holding them up for her to see. His eyes glittered dangerously. “It wouldn’t be the first time, now, would it?”_

_Petrified, Marina shook her head profusely._

_Standing right in front of Natalia now, Ivan lowered the sheets and looked around at them all. “Whoever did this, you will cause your entire class—all of your comrades—to suffer for your weakness. All of you will be punished.” No one said a word, and he looked suspiciously up at Marina again. “Marina? Do you have something to say?”_

_“It was me,” Natalia said suddenly. Ivan was so surprised he nearly dropped the sheets, turning his gaze down to the girl standing right in front of him. The one he would perhaps even call his prize pupil, if the Red Room offered such affections. “I wet the bed. And then I snuck out to hide the sheets.”_

_Ivan stared at her a moment more, then sighed, unlocking her wrist. “You know what this is, Natalia? Wasted potential. I am always telling you,_ mind over body _. You know what happens now.”_

_“Yes, Ivan,” she said meekly. He gave her another stern look before striding out of the dormitory with Natalia following him. He led her to the showers, entering one of the stalls with her._

_“Strip,” he commanded. She did as she was told, pulling her nightgown up and over her head. He took it from her, and at his hard gaze she stepped out of her undergarment as well. His eyes raked her up and down and she did her best not to shy away from him. Natalia could take this punishment like a future Black Widow. She could._

_Then he turned and stepped out of the stall. A moment later the shower head above her turned on, spraying her down with icy water. Her teeth barely had time to chatter before a second head’s spray replaced the first, this time with the water boiling hot. She clamped her jaw shut against making a sound even as her skin reddened and stung, so he turned the dial up higher. It burned. His long, thin fingers twisted it again._

_She screamed._


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha returns to the Farmhouse, where not everyone is happy to see her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! I really love this chapter and hope you do too. Nazezdha321, I expect you to yell at me about how you get the references after this. Here_for_Huntingbird, I hope you enjoy the slight Huntingbird allusions as your name suggests. And AurorExtraordinaire, you are a lovely human and I hope you love this too!
> 
> FYI, chapter also contains references to _Mockingbird _#4 by Chelsea Cain. My Bobbi is a mashup of AoS’s Bobbi and that comic series’ Bobbi, because both are badass ;)__

_Bobbi and Natasha have been on the hunt for Barton—and the Winter Soldier, who may be connected to his disappearance—for four months. After Natasha is injured, Bobbi convinces her to take up Laura’s offer of spending a brief Christmas on the Farm with the kids while Bobbi continues the search._

Present.

“I’m glad you chose to come,” Laura’s voice said softly in Natasha’s left ear through the phone pressed up to it.

“Yeah,” Natasha replied noncommittally. “Our last op didn’t go so well, so it made sense to heal up for a bit.”

“The kids will be happy to see you,” Laura told her. “How far out did you say you were?”

Natasha glanced at the Quinjet’s console. “Just under half an hour.”

“See you then,” she said. Natasha moved the phone away from her ear and ended the call, reclining back in the pilot’s seat slightly. One hand moved up to her hair, fingers tangling in the scarlet locks. Gritting her teeth, she stood up slowly, tenderly, with much more care than she had in days. She limped to the back of the empty plane, every breath a brief flare of fire in her lungs. She pulled her duffel out from where she had stowed it under one row of seats. The she pulled down one of the tac cases from above and plucked the handgun out of the dull gray foam inside. She checked the magazine—full, but you could never be too careful—and then the safety before throwing it in her bag. Satisfied, she zipped it up and left it in the aisle, heading back to the pilot’s seat. Phone once more in hand, she found Bobbi’s contact.

“I don’t suppose this is a courtesy call to let me know you made it safely to the Farmhouse?” Bobbi answered.

Her lips quirked upward, and she allowed some of that amusement to bleed into her voice. “Well, almost. I’m ten minutes out—what could happen?”

“A whole lot of things,” Bobbi said grudgingly. “I don’t suppose you called to wish Hunter a happy birthday then?”

Natasha made a face. “It’s Hunter’s birthday?”

“So he claims.”

“…You don’t know when your own boyfriend’s birthday is?”

“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s my ex-husband…who I’ve recently reacquainted with. ”

“That’s…much worse. Seriously, how—?”

“He’s a sneaky bastard.”

“You’re a spy.”

“He’s smarter than he looks. Or sounds. Or acts like.”

“Which isn’t saying much,” Natasha pointed out, the near foreign sensation of a laugh bubbling out of her throat. “Bobbi, you got _married_. There were _documents_.”

“It’s a long story,” the agent sighed. “But to answer the question you never asked, no, I haven’t found anything yet.”

The smile fell off her face and Natasha’s grip on the phone tightened. “I figured when you hadn’t called. But… _nothing_ , nothing?”

“The analysts were working on this long before I got here,” Bobbi said. “My presence isn’t going to magically change much.”

“I know,” Natasha sighed. “Walk me through it anyway.”

“You have control issues, you know that?”

“Like you don’t.”

“Touché.” Bobbi took a deep breath. “Well, Fury’s dedicated an entire floor of the Triskelion to the search. Limited access, level six and up only. I also convinced him to interface with some of our agents at the Hub. Vic’s there, she put a whole team together of the best she’s got. Anything comes up that looks like the Winter Soldier or this Diana Sokolova, they flag it for review. Anything flagged is immediately sent to me, Fury, Hill, and Hand.”

“Put me on that list,” Natasha said.

“No, you’re supposed to be recuperating.”

“Bobbi.”

“I promise I’ll call you if anything looks even remotely legit. I promise. But you’re not going to heal any faster jumping at every false alarm.” Natasha was silent. “You know I’m right.”

“I know. Doesn’t change the fact that I hate it.”

“Say hi to the kids for me.”

“Oh yes, Laura will love that.”

“So she does hate me,” Bobbi said. “I knew it. I knew I detected something.”

“She does not.” Natasha thought about it. “Okay, maybe a little. But you know, it was less that you were married to Clint and more the micro-dosing of experimental toxins you gave him behind his back.”

“Hey, those saved his life once,” Bobbi defended herself. “T.I.M. is no joke.”

“Uh-huh.” Out the window, the Farmhouse was coming into view as the Quinjet made its final descent. “Landing now. I should go.”

“See you in two weeks,” Bobbi said before the line clicked off. Natasha waited for the landing gear to rest firmly on the ground before standing and slipping her phone into her back pocket. She punched the red button to lower the rear ramp and headed out, grabbing her duffel bag along the way and ignoring the dull pain emanating from her ribs.

From the view as she stepped off the Quinjet, the Farmhouse didn’t look much different, and somehow that in and of itself felt like a gut punch. Of course Laura was capable of managing the entire farm on her own—and had done so for most of their marriage, something Clint occasionally felt guilty about despite the fact he knew she didn’t mind—but from far away, the Farmhouse looked as peaceful and idyllic as ever. A home, of a sort, or at least as much as any S.H.I.E.L.D. apartment had been.

No kids came running out to greet her this time, and Natasha tried not to feel concerned about that. Laura hadn’t mentioned anything being wrong, and it was probably better that she didn’t get tackled in greeting right now, what with her injuries.

As she approached the porch, what few small abnormalities there were in Clint’s prolonged absence presented themselves: a collection of small succulents shriveled and brown and in dire need of water along the railing, a newly opened bag of chicken feed leaning up against the side of the house instead of stowed in the barn where it belonged, and the slight yellowing of the American flag that waved in the breeze. Of all of them, the flag was the most worrying. Natasha knew Laura had grown up with her father in the military, and he hadn’t come home. Making sure the flag wasn’t left out night after night in the moist air wouldn’t have been high on Laura’s list of priorities, but still…she had never neglected it before.

Reaching the door, Natasha knocked gently on the frame before letting herself inside. She was already starting to feel exhausted, through she’d done next to nothing but sit around all day—her injuries sapping her strength. 

“Auntie Nat!” Lila appeared immediately from around the corner, running up to her. For a moment it looked like the girl was going to barrel straight into Natasha’s legs—she braced herself for it, but wouldn’t have minded—but she skidded to a stop inches from Natasha, looking chastised. “Mama says I’m not allowed to hug you.”

“No, I just said you had to be gentle,” Laura corrected her, arriving out of the kitchen. “Come on in, Nat.” At Natasha’s look, she added, “You mentioned your op going bad but didn’t say how injured you were. This isn’t my first rodeo; I know that means ‘more than you’d like to admit.’”

Smiling, Natasha accepted Lila’s hug and reached down to slip off her combat boots. “Where’s your brother, Lila?”

The girl’s face scrunched into a pout. “Sulking.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow, looking at Laura. The line of her lips hardened slightly, but she gestured toward the living room. “He’s in here.” Unsure of what she might find, Natasha set down her duffel bag out of the main walkway next to her shoes and took Lila’s hand, following her to the living room. Cooper was seated on the couch, staring at the blank television screen.

“Say hello to Auntie Nat,” Laura instructed, pulling Natasha up a chair.

His eyes didn’t leave the screen. “Hi.”

“Hi, Cooper,” Natasha said, keeping her voice perfectly neutral as she eased into chair. “It’s good to see you.”

His eyes turned on her. “Why are you here?”

“Your mom asked me to. I got a bit injured a couple days ago, so I decided to come,” Natasha told him.

“Well, you shouldn’t have. You should still be out there looking for Dad,” Cooper said, glaring at her.

“Natasha said she was injured,” Laura reprimanded.

“You don’t look injured,” Cooper said obstinately.

“I’m good at hiding it,” she told him truthfully.

“Well, if you’re healthy enough to be hiding it, then you’re healthy enough to be out there finding him. Like you _promised_.” Cooper’s eyes, clouded with hurt and betrayal, bored into hers.

Laura clapped her hands sharply. “That’s _enough_. Cooper, go outside and feed the chickens. And don’t come back until you are ready to be more considerate.”

“No,” Cooper said, twisting to face his mom. “I’m right! She’s leaving Dad out there to die! And you don’t even care!” Every word was a knife in her gut.

“I don’t want Daddy to die,” Lila whimpered, climbing up into Natasha’s chair and pressing her face into her shirt. Cooper’s words stung despite Lila’s warm weight, and Natasha could feel her exhaustion begin to burn at her temples, the beginnings of a headache coming on.

“Of course I care,” Laura said. “And so does Natasha. But she is injured, and she does not need this from you right now. Please, go outside and do as I say.”

“I don’t care about the chickens,” Cooper said, crossing his arms and drawing his legs up on the couch.

“What is your dad going to say when he comes home to all his favorite chickens having starved to death because you didn’t feed them?” Laura asked.

“If Dad comes home, he’ll be so glad to see us that he won’t care if any of them starved!”

The look in Laura’s eyes had grown steely, even if her voice remained measured. “All right, I’m glad you understand that you mean a lot to your father. But do the chickens deserve to starve just because you’re having a tantrum?” Mother and son locked gazes, and Natasha stayed out of it, watching the battle of wills with sadness and guilt settling in her gut.

“Fine!” Cooper shouted. He launched himself off the couch and stomped to the front door, closing it with a bang.

Lila buried herself further in Natasha’s shirt, and Laura leaned heavily against the kitchen counter, head down. Natasha’s hand stroked Lila’s back, too shaken by what had just happened to discuss it further, and especially not in front of seven-year-old Lila. At least one of Clint’s children didn’t hate her.

“Why don’t you show me some of your drawings, Lila?” Natasha suggested, for lack of anything else. The girl looked up, smiling, and untangled herself from Natasha’s lap to pull a few pieces of paper out of the coffee table drawer.

“I think I’m getting better,” Lila told her proudly, handing them over.

Natasha looked down at the first one and felt her throat close up entirely. Drawn in crayon, Lila’s family stood holding hands in front of what was unmistakably the Farmhouse. From what Natasha could tell, Lila was sitting up on Clint’s shoulders, like he often carried her. After staring at it unblinkingly for a few seconds, Natasha withdrew the second sheet and placed it on top of the first. A lopsided drawing of a man holding a bow stared back at her from behind gray crayon-made bars. “That’s Dad,” Lila said helpfully. “See, look, I think I got his bow right this time. I’m getting better.”

“Yes, you are,” Natasha kissed the top of her head. “It’s exactly right.”

“We should put those away for today,” Laura said from behind them. A gentle hand gripped Natasha’s shoulder. “I know it’s early, but you don’t look so great, Nat. You should go to bed. Lila, can you make sure Nat’s room’s all ready?”

“I’m fine,” Natasha protested more out of habit than anything else. Lila got up anyway and ran up the stairs.

“Clint wouldn’t want you hurting herself for no good reason,” Laura chided.

“He’s a good reason.”

“Yes, but some rest will do you good. We’ll still be here tomorrow.”

“I know,” Natasha sighed.

Laura offered her a hand to help her up. She would have eschewed it from anyone else, but this was Laura. “The kids can’t lose you too,” the woman told her.

“He won’t be lost forever…” she promised, looking Laura directly in the eyes and willing her to believe her. “I’m going to find him.”

Clint’s wife smiled sadly. “I know you are.”

* * *

A light knock on the door awoke Natasha, who opened her eyes to bright sunlight shining through the curtains and Laura’s head poking through the door. “What time is it?” Natasha murmured.

“Past noon,” Laura said.

“Fuck.” She’d been beaten up worse than she’d thought.

Laura raised an eyebrow. “Don’t let the kids hear you say that.”

“I won’t,” Natasha said, sitting up with a yawn. “But if only they knew what a pottymouth their mom was back in the day…”

Laura smiled. “They have no idea. And don’t you dare tell them.”

“Maybe when they’re older,” Natasha said. “I’ll be right down.”

“Sleep more, if you need,” the other woman said. “I honestly didn’t think I’d wake you.”

“No, it’s good. See you in a few.” Laura nodded and closed the door again.

Stretching, Natasha slid her legs out of bed. She threw one of Clint’s old sweatshirts that had somehow migrated into her drawers over her tank top, breathing in the familiar scent of him. A pair of yoga pants later, she brushed her teeth and ran a quick brush through her hair because she’d neglected to last night. After rearranging the quilt on the bed to something less rumpled, she headed downstairs.

“Auntie Nat, you slept in _late_ ,” Lila informed her with a giggle as soon as she reached the kitchen. “Can we paint together today?”

“Sure,” Natasha agreed, fairly certain she could convince the girl to learn how to do landscapes that were less conducive to depressing topics than her drawings. Laura set down a fresh plate of eggs and waffles with berries and fresh cream in front of her. “Sorry I didn’t help out with the chores this morning, I definitely will tomorrow.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Laura said. “You’re recuperating. And I’ve got two good helpers right here.” She ruffled both the kids’ hair, although Cooper was still sullen and silent. But Natasha couldn’t begrudge him that. He was missing his father.

The rest of the day passed in a restless, if contented, blur. She couldn’t help but look out the window sometimes, tense and expecting an attack. Then she went up to the lockbox under her bed and counted the bullets in the magazine, or sometimes disassembled and reassembled the gun altogether on top of the quilted bed. Worse was when she turned to one doorway or another, expecting Clint to appear like he usually did, ready to scoop her and Laura and the kids up and take them on another adventure. Even if one time, that adventure was just raking cow manure.

But she painted with Lila, breaking out the special oil paints and artisanal brushes and sponges because they could. Towards sunset, she helped the kids water the large vegetable garden, smiling at Lila’s rambling anecdotes about how big her pumpkin had grown this year. She prepared dinner—homemade gnocchi and tomato sauce with asparagus—while Laura wrestled the two kids into baths and cleaning up their rooms. When the kids were washed and fed and finally asleep for the night, Natasha and Laura curled up on opposite ends of the couch, only visible to each other bythe dim lamplight.

“How has it been, really?” Natasha asked.

“We’re managing,” Laura said, shrugging her shoulders. “I…I thought it would be easier since he’s away so much anyway, but this is different, you know?” Nat nodded. “And honestly…” Laura swallowed. “Sometimes I just don’t know what to do with the kids anymore.”

“They haven’t been taking it well,” she gathered.

“Just…refusing to go to school, hiding out on the farm, random tantrums out of nowhere,” Laura sighed. “Cooper…I think he understands a bit more than Lila does, understands a bit more of just how bad the world can be out there. He doesn’t have an outlet for those kinds of feelings…as you saw. In the beginning, the transmitter you gave them helped, but…”

“He feels helpless,” Natasha murmured.

“I’m sorry he’s been so standoffish,” Laura said. “I tried to talk to him, but…” She gave a watery laugh. “He’s not even a teenager yet.”

“It’s fine,” Natasha assured her. “But Lila’s been doing okay? Besides the drawings, she seems to be dealing with it all right.”

“Oh, you just caught her on a good day,” Laura said. “She’s always on her best behavior around you; she loves it when you’re here.” Natasha was silent. “I think she just blocks it out when she can, pretends this is just like one of your missions for S.H.I.E.L.D. And some days, she can’t.”

“Makes sense,” Natasha nodded. “I wish she didn’t have to go through this. Neither of them.”

“It wasn’t this bad when he was just out there running Fury’s missions,” Laura said quietly. “It was never this prolonged without any contact. Not even Budapest. You had him home then in, what, one and a half weeks?”

“A little worse for wear, but that sounds right.” One hundred fifty-nine hours until extract, to be exact.

Laura swallowed, and Natasha saw the film of tears in her eyes in the lamplight. “I’m just so scared and I can never show it. Not now that the kids are home twenty-four-seven on Winter Break, it would just freak them out more.” Natasha reached her hand out and grasped Laura’s, squeezing it tightly. “I can’t tell you how close I was to breaking when you called, Nat,” the woman whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha said. “I should have come sooner.”

Laura shook her head. “No. No, it’s good that you were out looking for him. I couldn’t stand the thought of him out there all alone… He knows you’re looking for him, Nat. He knows you won’t stop until you find him. It’s what’s keeping him going.”

“It’s the thought of seeing you and Cooper and Lila again that’s keeping him going,” Natasha said. “I’m just the one who’s going to get him here.”

“He’s been missing four months, Natasha…oh god, _four months_.” Laura choked a little. “I just can’t stop thinking, how can he even still be alive? Why would they keep him for that long? And if he is, what are they _doing_ to him? How much of Clint is even going to be left to come home?” Natasha scooted closer, crossing the length of the couch to wrap her arms around Laura’s shoulders. “I know you wonder these things too,” she said, voice somewhat muffled through her tears. “I just needed to say them out loud.”

“I understand,” Natasha whispered, tears pricking her own eyes watching Clint’s wife in such distress. “Come on, let’s go to bed.”

“Stay with me,” Laura whispered as they both stood up.

“I’m not going to leave you.”

They headed up the stairs in silence, Natasha’s arm wrapped firmly around Laura’s shoulders. She pushed open the door to the master bedroom instead, and they both crawled under the covers. Natasha tucked her body around Laura’s, one arm looping around her waist and her hand coming up to rhythmically stroke the other woman’s hair. Even after four months, Clint’s scent lingered in the bedroom and especially in the bed, and it registered that she was currently sleeping on his pillow.

“We’ll get through this,” Natasha promised, feeling the quiet sobs wracking Laura’s chest. “And when I bring him home, we’ll get him through this too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you thought, and stay safe and healthy out there until next time!


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint tells some stories.

_Her interrogation by Clint Barton of S.H.I.E.L.D. has begun. To make matters worse, her nightmares have returned._

Past.

In what she assumed to be morning, Natasha woke to bright lights and that same uncomfortably warm air and matching thin sheets covering her body, damp as they were with her sweat. Pretending not to notice it except to pull them up to the pillow again once she was on her feet, she wondered when she would see her interrogators again, unprofessional as they were. She crossed to the bathroom, brushing the tips of her fingers against the translucent barrier and causing flourishes of orange where they made contact.

Once inside the small alcove masquerading as a bathroom she scrubbed her face and hands, then dried both on the bottom of her shirt. With her fingernail she began to scrape at the wall, creating a thin vertical line about two centimeters in length over the sink. Then she sat down on the bed to wait as the Red Room had taught her.

The man called Barton didn’t keep her waiting long. “Romanoff,” he greeted her, gesturing for her to come to the table. She did, swaying her hips a bit more than necessary as she slid into the metal seat. No reaction from him, although Morse’s eyes became stonier. Natasha mentally marked that down as progress. “Do you feel like speaking today?” the archer asked.

She let her silence answer for her, staring at him with unreadable green eyes.

“All right then. I’ll talk.” He looked back at Morse, as if consulting her. “Start with Monaco or Tanzania?”

“This is stupid, Barton.”

“And that is why Fury put me in charge of this interrogation instead of you.”

Morse shot him a look.

“Okay, Monaco then.” He looked back at Romanoff, then shifted his feet up so that they could rest on the interrogation table between them. “So, Bobbi and I were on this op in Monaco—you know, the dress up in fancy tuxedo types. Personally, I hate them—you?”

No answer.

“Itchy, stiff clothing, and even stiffer people. That and Bobbi and I somehow always seem to get pushed onto the dance floor, which is definitely not our strong suit. She always wants to lead, ends up trampling my toes.”

Natasha spared a quick flick of her eyes to the blonde woman. Morse betrayed no emotion, nothing to tell Natasha whether this story was made up or not. It wouldn’t have mattered either way if it wasn’t a good way to collect intel: a name, perhaps codename, _Fury_ ; a weakness when dancing, perhaps one that ran deeper in the dynamics of leadership and dominance in their partnership.

“Anyways, so she and I did our requisite dancing to blend in, and our target was a rich old guy who was taking and financing bets on the Grand Prix happening in the city the next day. Normally this wouldn’t have been a S.H.I.E.L.D. issue, except for the fact he’d rigged the race in his favor and was using the money to fund a human trafficking ring that spanned half the continent. S.H.I.E.L.D. had been tracking this guy for months, and the most intel our source could give us was that he had white hair and always wore an ivory tie bar. Only problem was, every man at that party was wearing a bow tie—no tie clips to be found.”

Despite her training, Natasha found her concentration slipping. Why was he telling her this? Handing her operational tidbits, revealing information about them to her? Except for his age, nothing she had seen so far suggested he was a rookie or prone to make such mistakes, and she was well aware after the first interrogation session that even for this S.H.I.E.L.D. organization she must be fairly high-level catch. They wouldn’t entrust her to just anyone…he had to have a play. She just hadn’t figured out what it was yet.

“—and so, that’s how we ended up fighting thirty goons on the roof of the tallest building in Monaco. I had my bow but it was such tight quarters that it wasn’t much use, and they just kept coming out of the stairwell like sewage rats out of a storm drain. It was raining so hard that we could barely see each other five feet away, so when there was a lull, I don’t know why, I just…yelled for Bobbi to jump off the ledge onto the next building over so we could call for evac.” Clint grinned. “I couldn’t hear what she said back, but I assumed it was assent, so I leapt up of the ledge, and jumped.”

Natasha let her gaze flick up to Morse once more, this time detecting a faint smile on the finer musculature of her face, though her lips remained pursed in a straight, solid line.

“And that is how I discovered that large puddles are almost never deep enough to break your fall,” Barton concluded.

“Not almost, _never_ ,” Morse rolled her eyes.

“Broke my femur, had to use crutches for six months. If our handler hadn’t been so quick on the call for extraction, might have been eight.” He gazed at Natasha, who stared back at him impassively. “Not to your liking? Maybe one of the grittier ones then. That’s definitely Tanzania, on that one we ended up getting trussed up like turkeys in rusted chains in some drug lord’s basement…’course, that was before Bobbi managed to piss him off so much he sicced his pet lion on us…”

By the time the day had finished, Natasha had been subjected to Barton’s version of more stories than she cared to count, with a list of injuries a mile long—usually his—and spectacular saves—as far as she could tell, the woman was winning on that count too. After the first Morse hadn’t spoken a word, only communicating with her partner through significant glances and once a not-so-subtle kick to the back of his chair when he’d started off a tangent regarding what she supposed was one of their backstories.

And, nine long hours later, she still didn’t have a clue what his angle was, though she was fairly certain she could mimic every inflection his tongue made on the English words. And she had a growing list of things she knew about the two of them. Barton hated brussel sprouts. Morse, eggplant. Hanging upside down by his feet, Barton had many of the skills of a trapeze artist. Morse could, in a pinch, shoot his bow, though without much accuracy after the first hundred feet. He hated things with buttons and had a secret love for velcro. She spoke at least three languages but couldn’t read Farsi. He wanted to get a dog that they could train as an agent, and she…did not.

“Until tomorrow, Natasha,” Barton said, removing his feet from the table and standing up. She mentally stiffened at the sound of him using her first name so casually, cavalierly. And it was then that Natasha understood what the last nine hours had been about. It was the same game he’d been playing since the beginning, although played in a way that she had never witnessed before.

He was humanizing himself. Being relaxed, being easy-going, telling stories with what she supposed were meant to be humorous endings, revealing small tidbits about himself and his partner like his favorite type of succulent—cacti, though he’d sat on one once—and favorite food—pizza. She was meant to feel a connection towards him, especially given the mutual topic of ops and missions and injuries and orders.

But it would inevitably backfire, Natasha comforted herself when she was alone again. Humanization—she was all too familiar with humans, with all that humans were capable of. Being human made her recognize him as more dangerous, not less. Humans were rational creatures as Ivan had always taught her, capable of having an intellect and hidden motives and capable of killing for reasons other than food or shelter or fear. And, for such connection between them to be established, he must assume that she was human as well, and she was not wholly sure she was—not in the same way. His likes and dislikes had been laid out on the table, yet hers did not exist at all. Her food choices were based on availability, nutritional content, the security measures that could be taken in the store or restaurant should she choose to go in, and the health code rating that told her the likelihood of whether she would be sick or not. Likes and dislikes were for people with the luxury of choosing, and in her world not many of those survived.

In other words, she was not succumbing to Clint Barton’s mind games, no matter how long they would go on.

And they did for six more days.

At the end of the seventh day, Natasha lay back on her bed, staring at nothing with her face angled upwards towards the dimming ceiling lights. Her head was full to bursting with facts about her interrogator and his mostly silent partner…the number of kills he had mentioned, the cities they had been to, the languages they spoke…too many figures and facts for her to keep track of, with no way of knowing which if any would ever be useful. Trying to retain them all was like trying to not let mud slip through splayed fingers, making her head hurt with the effort. She retired from each interrogation more exhausted than the one before, with an aching skull and the feeling of her muscles slowly atrophying from disuse, not to mention her voice.

But she persisted in the only way she knew how. What else could she do?Even two years out of their tutelage she still quoted the Red Room in the quiet of her own head. It was time to put it to some use.

Natasha blinked, the gray ceiling disappearing momentarily before her eyes flashed open again, gazing into the haze of darkness though there was nothing to see.

_I am Natasha Romanoff. I was born in 1984. I am nineteen years old. I am the Black Widow. I am in the Red Room. I am loyal to the Red Room. I am loyal to Russia. I serve the KGB. I have no place in the world._

Her breathing slowed infinitesimally, evening out.

_I am Natasha Romanoff. I was born in 1984. I am nineteen years old. I am the Black Widow. I am in the Red Room. I am loyal to the Red Room. I am loyal to Russia. I serve the KGB. I have no place in the world._

The pounding in her head lessened.

_I am Natasha Romanoff. I was born in 1984. I am nineteen years old. I am the Black Widow. I am in the Red Room. I am loyal to the Red Room. I am loyal to Russia. I serve the KGB. I have no place in the world._

She closed her eyes.

_I am Natasha Romanoff. I was born in 1984. I am nineteen years old. I am the Black Widow. I am in the Red Room. I am loyal to the Red Room. I am loyal to Russia. I serve the KGB. I have no place in the world. I am Natasha Romanoff…_

The words reverberated in her head long after sleep had claimed her, chasing the dreaded dreams away.

* * *

“And how’s my favorite prisoner this morning?” Barton greeted her, falling into his seat at the interrogation table. She gazed back at him, expression irretrievably bored. “Still silent, I see. You know, I never was much good at the silence game when I was a kid. Sure, I could be silent, good for hiding from dear old Dad, but _quiet_? God no. I couldn’t stop moving, ‘cept when I was lining up a shot, or getting into things I shouldn’t… Still can’t, really. Case in point—you.” Barton sighed. “I think it’s why Fury doesn’t like me all that much.” He glanced back at his partner, who was leaning against the back wall, arms crossed. “Right?”

“Among many other reasons,” the woman replied.

He turned back to Natasha. “Don’t regret it though, no matter how much KP Fury makes me do. See, my partner, Bobbi…she’s as good as they come. She can take on whatever op S.H.I.E.L.D. has for her, whether it’s long-term undercover or busting a cartel or a hit on one very bad man.” Natasha waited for this line of questioning to reach the part with questions so that she could actively ignore them. “But she, she has to train every day to do what she does, to maintain her skills, and she still doesn’t move as fluidly as you. She had to work for every ounce of skill she’s got, but for you…it’s natural. Instinctive.” Barton held her gaze, his own blue eyes serious as could be. She stared back at him unflinchingly, her face set in a steely repose. “Which tells me that you’re either a child soldier, or a child spy. And a small part of me’s telling me that in your case, it’s one in the same.” He broke gaze with her, finally, pushing himself back to balance carefully on the back two legs of his metal chair. “So what are you going to do once you figure out how to dispatch me, jimmy the lock on this cell, and take out all of the agents outside to reach the surface? Go back to your handler? Go back to where you were trained, maybe even raised? What could possibly be waiting for you there, with them, that warrants this kind of loyalty?” He studied her face, a pointless task because it remained unchanged. “Or maybe I’m not talking to Natasha at all right now. Maybe all I’m seeing sitting across from me is her conditioning, the shell of a person they’ve already obliterated.” He stood up, a bit of sorrow—no, pity—detectable in his countenance. She hated it. “I’m here because I believe it’s the former. But I need something from you in return for me to keep believing there’s still a person behind the mask. I can’t do this alone, Natasha. You need to do something too.”

Natasha parted her lips slowly, as if brought to speak by his heartfelt speech. Then she closed it again with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

And so their game wore on.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha leaves the Farmhouse to follow a new, tentacled lead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP all of us desperately waiting until May 1st for the Black Widow movie...at least we can take heart that Disney doesn't want it to flop any more than we do. 
> 
> We waited ten years; what's another few months, right?

_After Natasha is injured on the hunt for Barton, Bobbi convinced her to take up Laura’s offer of spending a brief Christmas on the Farm with the kids while she continues the search. At the Farmhouse, however, not everyone was happy about her visit._

Present.

Christmas at the Farmhouse was nothing like years past. Before, there had been cookie baking, stockings and presents, laughter and cuddles by the fire while the kids played with their new toys or read their new books.

This year, the tree looked haphazardly thrown up, with sagging strings of lights and tinsel, and even two days after the 25th half-unwrapped gifts lay strewn under it, abandoned by Lila for the sake of crying into her mother’s chest that all she really wanted was Dad. Cooper hadn’t opened any at all, just stared silently at the sight of his full stocking until the morning had degraded enough that he was allowed to stomp back upstairs.

So when Bobbi called two mornings later with news, Natasha hated herself for it, but jumped at the chance to leave. “You have a lead?” Laura asked when she told her of her plans, voice barely daring to be hopeful.

“Sort of,” Natasha said. “Hopefully, a chance to get more leads. It’s a bit complicated to explain, but…”

Laura nodded. “I understand. Just bring him home.”

“I will,” she replied, pouring every ounce of conviction she had into the statement. She looked at Lila, who was sitting on the counter and swinging her feet against the wooden cabinets below. “You take good care of Mama and Cooper while I’m gone, yeah?”

“Then you take good care of Daddy,” Lila told her seriously, and Natasha smiled.

“Yep. I’m going to find him and take good care of him,” she replied. “I’ll go say goodbye to Cooper, and then head out.”

“I’ll pack you a lunch,” Laura said immediately.

“Oh, you don’t have to—”

Clint’s wife affixed her with a knowing look. “It’s one o’clock already, and by the time you get back to the Triskelion it’ll be at least three. You telling me you’re going to go straight to the cafeteria and get yourself something to eat when you arrive?”

“Fine,” Natasha said with a wave and a friendly roll of her eyes as she jogged up the stairs. Cooper’s door was closed, so she knocked carefully. “Cooper?” she asked. There was no answer, but she pushed the door open anyway, sticking her head inside. “Hey.”

“Hi,” the boy said from where he was seated against the headrest of his blue-quilted bed. He was staring down at the transmitter Natasha had entrusted into his care the last time she visited the Farmhouse—the one that Clint would have activated, if he could have.

“I’m headed back out,” Natasha said.

“Does that mean you know where he is?” Cooper asked dully.

“Not yet,” Natasha replied truthfully. “But we have another lead, and I’m going to follow it. Wherever it goes.”

“What if it doesn’t go anywhere?”

“Then I’ll find another. And another, until I’ve found him.”

“What if he’s already dead?” Cooper said, still not looking at her.

Natasha decided not the lie, but chose her words carefully, perching on the edge of his bed. “It is possible,” she told him. “But I don’t think so. If they wanted him dead, they would have killed him in his apartment, not kidnapped him. If they took him because they wanted to send a message, they would have done so already.”

“Then why did they do it,” Cooper whispered.

“I don’t know. I’ll find out when I find him,” Natasha said.

The boy looked up, finally, and she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. He reached for her, and Natasha enveloped him in a long-overdue hug, feeling some of the dark clouds that’d hung over her entire stay here begin to float away. “I’m sorry I was so mean to you, Auntie Nat,” he gulped. “I just miss him so much. And I can’t do anything about it.”

“I know,” Natasha murmured into his hair. “Not being able to do anything is the hardest part. It’s okay. Just…just try not to take it out on your mom, okay? She can’t do anything either.”

“Okay,” Cooper agreed.

She held him close for another few seconds, then kissed him on the crown of his head and released him. “Time to go,” she said. Cooper nodded, wiping his eyes with his sleeves.

“Good luck,” he told her as she got up and headed for the door.

“Thanks,” she said. Natasha nodded toward the transmitter. “Keep an eye on that for me. If I find him, you’ll be the first to know. Laura knows how to contact me.”

“I will,” Cooper promised.

Natasha walked off the Quinjet landing pad with the air of someone on a mission, chucking the wrappings from Laura’s packed sandwich in the trash can before entering the building. The other agents skirted around her as she headed straight for the elevator, taking it up to the upper level where Fury and Bobbi were waiting. When she entered the small conference room, she was surprised to see it filled with agents in tactical gear, large guns slung across their chests.

Locating Bobbi at the front of the room, Natasha made a beeline for her, slipping between the armored bodies easily. “We gearing up for a war?” she greeted her.

“Good to see you too, Tasha,” Bobbi said.

“I thought you said you found a facility connected to the Winter Soldier,” Natasha continued.

“We did. And ‘facility’ means a lot of firepower, a lot of guards to take out… Fury called in the cavalry. Well, not _the_ Cavalry, but you know what I mean.”

“What happened to surgical strikes,” Natasha grumbled. “We’re _spies_.”

“Well, we _could_ _have_ if your ribs were fully healed and you were cleared by medical for such an op,” Bobbi told her.

“My ribs are fine,” Natasha hissed.

“Ribs take four to six weeks to heal. Even you can’t do it in two,” Bobbi said flatly. “So, strike teams.”

“I’m going in with the first one,” she said.

“You’ll follow them once the hallways have been cleared,” Nick Fury said from behind her, “and that’s an order, Romanoff.” She glared at him and he glared right back, somehow gathering more malice than she could muster into his one eye.

“Fine,” she muttered, all too aware of the attention this conversation was beginning to draw from the assembled agents.

“All right, people,” Fury said, loud enough for all of the strike teams to snap to attention. “You’ll be boarding Quinjets 218, 306, and 275. Agent Hand has already briefed the strike team leaders of the mission details; they will brief the rest of you en route. Head out.”

“Need anything before we go?” Bobbi asked her, gathering up her staves from the table and snapping them into place on the back of her tac suit. “I’ve got your weapons and uniform on our jet.”

“No, I’m good to go,” Natasha replied, suddenly thankful for Laura’s sandwich foresight. “How far to the facility?”

“Rural Pennsylvania. Not far,” Bobbi answered.

Fury nodded at them. “Good luck, Morse, Romanoff.”

The facility didn’t look like much, even after they had landed on its roof. White and gray, surrounded by an electric fence with farmland beyond, and only one road going in or out. “Earpiece,” Bobbi said, handing it to her as she strode out of the pilot’s seat. “No alarms from our landing. You think it’s possible they didn’t feel tha—?”

Right on cue, an alarm began blaring.

“Of course,” Bobbi said. She hit the button to extend the ramp, where the strike teams were already funneling into the manhole S.H.I.E.L.D. drones had identified as the best entrance route. _“We have breached the facility. No sign of hostiles,”_ her earpiece crackled. Once every agent in tactical gear was through, Natasha and Bobbi descended. Her hands gripped the metal bars lightly as she quickly climbed down the ladder, simply letting go and dropping the last few feet once she was close enough to the bottom. The jolt jostled her ribs, making them twinge uncomfortably.

The hallway they found themselves in went off in two different directions. The strike teams split seamlessly into two factions, each advancing down a separate hallway. Bobbi and Natasha looked at each other, and mutually agreed to split up. “Stay behind the strike teams,” Bobbi told her. “Do you hear me, Natasha?”

“Got it,” she shrugged her off, drawing her first handgun and cocking it. She headed off down the left-side hallway, nevertheless keeping her center of mass behind the men in bulletproof vests. They made it about a fourth of the way down before a squadron of armed men rounded the corner in front of them, spraying fire into the S.H.I.E.L.D. ranks. Natasha ducked instinctively, but the strike members carrying large ballistic shields successfully blocked the first volley. The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, Natasha included, immediately began to fire back, bringing down the less fortified group of men. Once they were all down, Natasha jogged forward, ignoring the growing pools of blood, and peered around the corner, weapon at the ready. Behind her, she could hear the agents checking the bodies for any kind of identifying insignia.

“Wait, is that…” one of them asked, dragging a body up by the back collar for one of her teammates inspection. Natasha glanced between the small red symbol and the large black one painted on the far wall of the next hallway.

“Yes, it is,” she said, staring at the skull and tentacles.

“I thought HYDRA was defeated in the forties by Captain America,” said an agent.

“So what are they, some kind of neo-Nazi copycats?” another agent asked.

Natasha tapped her earpiece. “HQ, be advised we have enemy forces bearing the HYDRA symbol on their uniforms,” she reported. “It’s also on the walls.”

_“Copy that, Agent Romanoff,”_ Hand replied.

“All right, keep moving,” Rumlow ordered his team. “We’ve got a lot more of this facility to secure.” The strike teams formed up again and continued down the right-hand hallway toward the symbol. Natasha reluctantly fell into step behind them; brow furrowed. HYDRA? Sure, that added up with the fact that James Buchanan Barnes was still alive and kicking, but she didn’t like the implication that the Red Room and HYDRA were both involved in this.

“Any of these rooms unlocked?” Rumlow asked.

“I’ve been checking,” Natasha shook her head. “So far, nothing interesting in them either. Just office space, armories… Wait, here we go.” She stopped the strike team with a wave of her arm—Rumlow’s eyes narrowing at the way they obeyed her without question—and gestured to the door. “There’s servers in this one. Whichever one of you specializes in explosives, if you would.”

One of the agents—the female from before—hurried forward to examine the door. After rapping on it with her knuckles to identify the material, she withdrew a small tan stick from her vest pocket and, breaking a piece off, attached a detonator to it. “Incoming!” another agent yelled, and the ballistic shields went up again, taking the fire. Natasha fired back, and yet another group of men crumpled before them.

“Marsters is hit!” an agent said. Natasha turned to see the man in question pale-faced and with one hand wet with blood, pressed to his side.

“It’s just a graze, I think?” he gasped out.

Natasha pointed to two of the agents not holding shields. “You two, get him to a Quinjet and pack the wound.” They obeyed immediately, lifting Marsters’s arms and supporting him down the hallway, uttering reassurances in response to the man’s cries of pain. Rumlow looked even angrier now, but Natasha couldn’t bring herself to care.

“We’ve got one wounded headed back to the Quinjet,” Natasha reported into her earpiece.

“Ready to blow the door when you are,” the woman said, looking between her and Rumlow.

“Everyone back!” Rumlow shouted before Natasha could answer. “Take cover.” She followed them a safe distance down the hallway and plugged her ears. At her signal, the agent detonated the C-4, igniting a blast that Natasha could hear even through the fingers stuffed in her ears. Standing, she approached the door to find a neat hole where the locking mechanism would have been.

“Good job,” she told the agent.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“All right, I’m going to stay here and have HQ take a crack at their servers,” Natasha said to Rumlow. “You keep going without me.”

“Our orders were to keep you with us,” Rumlow argued.

She rolled her eyes. “I’ll be fine, _Brock_.” She lifted her leg and kicked the door in fully, letting it bang loudly against the back wall. “Go.”

He didn’t look happy about it, but Rumlow signaled his team to move out. Natasha immediately scanned the room for possible cover, and ended up overturning a table next to the door that she could duck behind if need be. Alongside the row of servers on the back wall was a computer, which she made a beeline for, pulling a small flash drive from her pocket. Inserting it into the machine, she watched the screen light up into a login page before being corrupted by lines of blue text. Satisfied the malware on the drive was doing its job, she reloaded her weapon with a full mag and placed it on the desk beside the computer mouse where it was easily reachable. After another few seconds, the program bypassed the login screen, bringing her to the desktop. “Windows 8,” Natasha said in disgust, knowing how much Clint would have hated it. Another window popped up in the forefront of the screen as the computer finished booting. _Deleting 171,898 of 176,230 files…estimated time remaining 6:02 before self-destruct._ “All units, be advised that there may be a self-destruct in place in this building to go off in about six minutes,” Natasha said, hand pressed to her ear.

_“Copy,”_ said Rumlow, followed shortly by the five other strike team commanders.

_“Split up into teams of three and clear the rest of the facility as quickly as you can,”_ Hand ordered. _“Everyone gets out before then. Take any intel you can with you.”_

Natasha leaned down close to the computer screen again, opening their file system. As she watched, more folders were disappearing, but these appeared to be operational files. And there, at the bottom—the Winter Soldier Program. She clicked on it, feeling the seconds ticking away with the unsteady beating of her heart. She tried copying the entire thing to her drive, but it stupid system would only queue it after the delete, wasting a few more precious seconds. Natasha opened the first file that seemed applicable, scanning over what appeared to be a mission report, various words and phrases jumping out at her. _Belgrade. Bomb. 8 November 2009._ Was there anything more recent? She closed the window and scrolled through the last modified dates. Most were in the late 2000s… Files began to disappear before her eyes, and she clenched the hand not using the mouse hard enough to make fingernail indentations in her palm. 2011! She clicked on it, eyes flying over the words. The computer made an unhappy beep, and the window closed abruptly, replaced by _File Not Found_.

But Natasha had seen enough. The Winter Soldier had escaped his handlers, HYDRA or otherwise. Her mind was whirling with the possibilities as she checked the time on the delete: a minute forty-two seconds left before self-destruct. Whether that was just these servers or the whole facility, she didn’t want to find out. She pulled out the drive and picked up her gun, turning towards the door. She vaulted over the overturned table, landing in the hallway outside, and began to sprint towards the way they’d come, vaguely aware of the sounds of Bobbi’s voice in her ear, demanding her location. Was the Soldier working for some new party, or was he working alone, as she had after leaving her handlers?

Rounding the corner, she ran into a group of HYDRA men that she only identified by the back of their uniforms. The closest she hit with the butt of her gun, silencing him before he could let off a sound. That gave her enough time to put a bullet in the back of two more of their heads before the gun was knocked out of her hand as the fourth and fifth ran at her. She ducked under their legs in a decidedly less fluid motion than she would have managed with working ribs, but unbalanced one of the men with a sweep of her foot anyway, sending him crashing to the floor. Springing up and stepping nimbly on the underside of his knee, his hip, and then the small of his back, she launched herself at the remaining goon, thighs closing around each side of his head. Her hips twisted, earning her a sickening _snap_.

Natasha fell heavily to the ground with the dead man, then disentangled her legs with a swift kick and kept running. The manhole was up ahead, with no S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in sight. She scrambled up the ladder and was hauled up the last few feet by the upper arms as the facility began to rumble beneath her. “We need to go, now!” Bobbi yelled over the sound of engines. Two of the three Quinjets were already in the air.

The two of them sprinted up the ramp to the last jet, Bobbi practically throwing herself in the pilot’s seat and dragging the throttle toward her. The Quinjet lurched upward not a moment too soon and Natasha hung on to the back of the copilot seat for dear life, lest she be thrown back out through the still-open ramp. She grabbed one of the dangling straps for holding down equipment and made her way back to the button that would close the back of the Quinjet up.

“Hold on!” Bobbi shouted helpfully as the facility exploded beneath them. The Quinjet rocked dangerously in the air but kept rising. In another fifteen seconds, they were at a safe distance, and Natasha sat down heavily in the copilot’s seat. “Don’t ever leave it that close again,” Bobbi told her.

“Thanks for waiting,” Natasha said. “Did you find anything?”

“Nothing actionable,” Bobbi replied, the regret clear in her voice. “Nothing to confirm the nature of the connection between the Winter Soldier and this group in 2006.”

“He was their asset,” Natasha told her.

“You found intel?” Bobbi looked at her. “Why didn’t you lead with that?”

“The video that S.H.I.E.L.D. analyst found of the Solder entering this facility in 2006—it was because he was run out of here. At least until 2011. From what I can tell, that’s when they lost track of him.”

“So you think he’s been working alone since then,” Bobbi said.

“Or with Sokolova,” she replied. “Or with the Red Room.”

Bobbi gave her a sideways glance. “You still think they’re involved?”

“I know anyone could have known that line,” Natasha said quietly. “I know my interaction with Loki was leaked on the internet. But I still feel like they’re involved in my gut.”

“Except for the fact that Sokolova is Russian, we have nothing pointing to—”

“And nothing ruling it out, either,” Natasha cut her off. “Just drop it, all right? We have a lot of things to talk to Fury about.”

“HYDRA,” Bobbi said.

“HYDRA,” Natasha agreed.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Storytime is over, and Natasha attempts escape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just finished writing this fic around 1AM last night, so I am super excited to share the rest with you. Enjoy!

_Her interrogation by Clint Barton of S.H.I.E.L.D. has begun, as…_ unorthodox _as his methods might be._

Past.

“Brought food,” the man, Barton, announced. With her eyes closed she heard the scrape of metal on concrete as a chair was pulled out—him being chivalrous, or…? Her eyes cracked open and she sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. No, he was….sitting there. Waiting for her. The only thing that could have made this worse was if he had had a tray of victuals himself.

Well, no matter how much a rapport he _thought_ he had been building with her over this last week of storytelling, _that_ wasn’t going to happen. She tucked her legs underneath her on the bed, crossing them without a word. Natasha stared him down, radiating cold defiance. As if she wanted to hear about yet another op that he had been on…as if she _cared_.

In response, Barton just hefted his legs up onto the surface of the table, reclining back in his chair as he had become accustomed. “That’s fine; we can talk from here,” he said indifferently. He leaned back even further, stopping only at the tipping point. She hoped he would tip over backwards, but he never did. “I’m not moving the food any closer though.”

That didn’t surprise Natasha. Clint Barton was proving to be a capable, well-trained, _intelligent_ agent…and apparently one with impeccable balance.

“Analysts upstairs finally finished compiling their report on you. Took them long enough—they say you’re hard to trace, the hardest most of them have ever had. But S.H.I.E.L.D. is the world’s premier intelligence agency for a reason. Do you know what that means for us, Natasha?”

She actually didn’t, not that she would ever admit it.

“It means storytime is over.” Unfazed by her continued silence, he held up a piece of folded paper taken out of the inside of his jacket and placed it on the table in front of him. It was blank. “Let’s try being honest with each other to start. I’ll show you my cards first.” Barton indicated the paper. “This is all the data we had on you six months ago.” He pulled out a file folder. “This is what we have now.” He opened it, addressing the first page within. “You came onto our radar in Berlin when you were caught on a S.H.I.E.L.D. hidden security camera entering the Reichstag. Two days later, the entire system shut down inexplicably, and American diplomat Anthony Rivera was found murdered in a Reichstag bathroom.”

Natasha made no movement; she betrayed nothing through her face. She remembered Rivera, vaguely—a knife ripped across his neck as he zipped up his pants at the urinal. Two hundred million pesos.

“We couldn’t connect you to it, of course. We didn’t even know who you were then, or that the Black Widow was anything more than a myth peddled by the remnants of the Soviet government who wanted to seem relevant in a post-Cold War world. It wouldn’t have mattered at all, in fact, had a red-haired woman matching your height and stature not appeared at six previous unsolved crimes in six different nations. Your profile was flagged. Two weeks later, we got another hit—caught wind of a hospital fire in Pakistan, where you narrowly escaped the flames pretending to be one of its victims fleeing the scene.” He looked at her. “There were one hundred twenty-nine casualties in that fire; did you know that? I can only surmise one of them was your intended target… But, I’m just naming facts here.” He glanced down at the file. “Next…Antonia Drakov, seven-year-old daughter of Anton Drakov, the premier nuclear weapons developer for Russia. Except he got cold feet in 1999…stopped making weapons for the mother country and moved to the small town of Perigoyev, where he opened a bake shop. You see, we know so much about this one because you weren’t the only interested party. S.H.I.E.L.D. had him under surveillance, and as I understand it the CIA and MI6 were about to make a move when Drakov suddenly went back to the employ of the Kremlin, got his old job back.” All trace of Clint Barton’s ease had gone; in fact, he looked rather menacing. “I don’t know how many of these you remember, Romanoff, so I’ll detail it for you. His daughter’s second grade teacher, according to the news reports, a bright young woman who’d only just begun her teaching career, invited Antonia up to the blackboard one day and gunned her down with an AK-47 in front of all her classmates.” His jaw clenched, and then released.

_I am Natasha Romanoff. I was born in 1984. I am nineteen years old…_

“For two months Drakov had been receiving increasingly threatening letters, for two months you taught those kids in that classroom. And then one day, you put forty-eight bullet holes into your prize pupil and nineteen seven-year-olds into lifelong therapy.”

_…Red Room. I am loyal to the Red Room. I am loyal to Russia. I serve the KGB. I have no place in the world. I am Natasha Romanoff…_

Barton let his hand fall on his stack of papers in the file with a _thud_. “I’m done for the day. We can continue with this tomorrow,” he said, something akin to disgust in his voice. It had only been an hour, but the door slammed behind him.

As soon as it had, Natasha stood up quickly, self-satisfied in the fact that he had left the food there on the table and the fact that their interrogation had finally gotten to the meat of the matter. She ate it with the ravenous hunger of one who might not get another meal and with a bitter taste in her mouth that had nothing to do with the food.

* * *

The days went on like that, countless in number. The archer called Barton would interrogate her, sometimes bearing food, sometimes not. Sometimes with more lists of her crimes which she assumed they’d just discovered. Sometimes his partner with the bright blonde hair would accompany him, but less and less as the days trickled by. They seemed to think that if the Widow was going to try something, she would have already.

They were wrong.

“Business mogul Katerina Conway, 41, shot straight through the temple from the building across the way.” She was sitting across from him this time, her hands curled in her lap and voice as mute as ever. “Victor Rice, 26, actuary, sole witness to the Breit murders in ’02. Killed in witness protection an hour before he was set to take the stand. Cops still don’t understand how you did it.” It was one of the days Morse had chosen not to come. Natasha shifted slightly in her seat, readying her muscles to spring. “Alice Zarthikeyan…I would ask why someone would order a contract on a three-year-old, but seeing the type of people you took contracts from, it’s not even surprising.” She flew across the desk table, her chair screeching backwards across the stone floor as she expelled herself from it. Her hand covered the back of his head before he could raise it, and she slammed him face-first into the table. Blood spattered the files as his nose splintered on impact.

Natasha threw herself at the door, battering her body against it, but it would not budge. Plan B. She scooped Barton’s head from the table, grasping him behind the jaw and under the chin as his eyes swam in their sockets and rivulets of blood cascaded over her fingers and down her front. She held him, ready to snap his neck at a twist of her wrists. “Open the door or Barton dies!” she shouted. The word _door_ cracked in her throat from the strength of the yell and previous disuse of her voice, but the message came out clear and strong. “I’ll use him as a battering ram, I swear I will!”

To prove her point she hefted the man out of his chair, lugging his body across the ground towards the door. As soon as the lock clicked, she pulled him upwards by the armpits without pretense, and the first two tranquilizer shots made by the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents swarming in hot him squarely in the chest. Luckily the doorway was not large, allowing only two of them in at a time—two that were quickly sprawled across the floor with Barton’s limp form on top of them. The next two were not dispatched as easily, as she had no other body to throw at them but her own. Her thighs twisted around one man’s neck, cutting off his air supply. He dropped to the floor and she rolled past him, tripping the other with a swift jut of her leg. Natasha sprang to her feet and raced down the hallway, beginning to wonder why no alarms had been sounded at her escape.

And then wondering why she hadn’t thought to take any of their guns.

And then why her limbs seemed to be moving through molasses instead of air.

And why her head felt so foggy.

Her knees buckled, sending her to the floor where fingers clawed at the empty hallway.

* * *

“Well, did you have fun?” a voice asked from somewhere above her. “I did. I had fun.” Natasha blinked, the bright white world coming into focus around her. She was lying atop her mattress in her S.H.I.E.L.D. cell. Catching her eye, Barton waved to her from behind the invisible wall. He would have looked comical, with a bloodied tissue stuffed up each nostril and a bandage on top of it in the form of a splint.

“What did you do to me?” Natasha asked, sitting up.

“Like I said before…only the best for the Black Widow,” Barton said amicably. “No one died during the escape attempt, just so you know. Fury would be _real_ mad if they had, so, thanks. He’d probably make me go scrub the toilets on floor one or something.” He took a step closer, leaning in conspiratorially. “I don’t know what they put in the tacos for Taco Tuesday in that floor’s cafeteria, but trust me, you do not want to touch those bathrooms with a ten-foot-pole.”

Natasha only stared at him impassively.

“But, in other news, the Boss Man _is_ having me reassigned, so you’ll be having someone new take over interrogation. Name’s Rumlow. He’s kind of a bastard.” Barton thought about it. “Actually, no, he’s very much a bastard. But I’ll see you around.”

She raised one eyebrow.

He stepped fully into the room, like there had never been a barrier there at all. She did nothing as he reached her, still trying to figure out what kind of game he was playing. Barton poked her in the shoulder with one finger, winked, and was sauntering back out the door of the room to the freedom beyond before she could do anything.

“Try not to kill anyone on your next escape attempt either,” Barton called after him. “I’ve got twenty bucks riding on this!”


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> S.H.I.E.L.D. starts an investigation into HYDRA, and Natasha takes off again after some advice from a teammate.

_Natasha and Bobbi, along with several S.H.I.E.L.D. strike teams, raided a facility the Winter Soldier was seen entering in 2006. Inside, they found men sporting HYDRA insignias, and Natasha found information indicating that the Winter Soldier escaped HYDRA control in 2011._

Present _._

For once, the conference room was being used as intended by whoever designed the Triskelion. Fury sat at the head of the table, Bobbi and Natasha to his left, and the leaders of each of the strike teams on the right. Also present were Agents Hand and Blake via the large screens on the back wall, and Agents Sitwell and Carter seated in front of them. The mood in the room was somber, focused. This was important—even Natasha recognized that, itching as she was to return to the search for Clint.

Fury turned to Rumlow and the other strike team heads. “Based on what you saw down there, your assessment of the threat level?”

“If it is HYDRA, sir, then of course high,” Rumlow said. “But beyond the use of their symbol, we saw no indication of that.”

“That’s a pretty large indication,” Carter cut in, narrowing her eyes at Rumlow.

“The facility did not seem to have much by way of fortification. Their equipment, their security, their defensive capabilities all were no match for our teams,” he replied, ignoring Carter to speak directly to Fury. “From that, I would say the threat level is low.”

“And, they have never crossed our radar before,” Blake added. “If their organization was big or making waves in any sensitive sectors, we would have discovered it. I agree with Agent Rumlow’s assessment.”

“Except for the fact that they ran the Winter Soldier for several years,” Natasha said. Her arms were crossed, and she leaned back in her chair.

“Who is this ‘Winter Soldier’?” Rumlow asked. Natasha glanced at Fury and saw his eyes flick toward Sitwell with a small nod.

“The Winter Soldier is an assassin run by unknown parties that has been credited with an unconfirmed twenty-six hits over the last fifty years,” Sitwell said, looking down at the file folder in front of him. “His existence was unconfirmed until he interfered with Agent Romanoff’s op in Odessa in ’07. Until recently, we had only a sketch of his face to go on, and had little luck using facial recog to track him down.”

Fury waved a hand. “Agent Romanoff is already hunting the Winter Soldier in relation to one of our ongoing operations. What I am most concerned with is the possibility of a leak within S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Sir?” Carter asked.

“The timeline doesn’t add up unless they knew we were coming,” Natasha said. “When I accessed their computers, the system was already wiping itself. Based on the progress it had made and the number of files to delete, they knew were coming well before we arrived.”

“It would also explain why we met so little resistance onsite,” Rumlow agreed, looking troubled.

“Thus, the leak,” Fury said dangerously. “I want an investigation. Only the people in this room will know about it. Morse and Romanoff already have their assignment. Agent Hand, you will remain running back-end on their op. Sitwell, you’ll take point on this investigation.”

“I can help him, sir,” Rumlow offered. “One of my guys got shot, so my team will be taking R&R for the next few weeks anyway. If any of the agents we’re running ops with are actually tentacle heads, I want to know.”

“Good,” Fury nodded his consent. “The rest of you, keep your eyes open. You are dismissed.”

* * *

There was a knock on the doorframe. “Thinking of leaving without me?” Bobbi asked, arms crossed. Natasha declined to answer, continuing to count magazines out of a veritable pile on her floor, checking that each was fully stocked with bullets. “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, eyes boring holes in the back of Natasha’s head. “And going to war, I see.”

Natasha glanced briefly upward at the equipment scattered around her—a sniper rifle in a case, twin P-90s in case she needed more stopping power, all the latest Starktech toys, two silvery cases full of grenades and flash bangs, and more hidden from view on the other side of the couch—and decided the statement was accurate. She heard the door click shut.

“You’re impossible, you know that?” There was some anger in the other agent’s voice now, but she couldn’t afford to be affected. “You’re not the only one who cares about Clint, Natasha!”

“What we were doing wasn’t working,” she said levelly, without looking up. “The Winter Soldier is someone from my past, someone who’s operating like I used to operate. I need to go back to that in order to catch him.”

“Going back to what, operating alone, always looking over your shoulder, never having someone to watch your back? How is that supposed to help?” Bobbi demanded.

“I need to do this without a safety net,” Natasha said. “Without worrying about the person next to me who might get killed because of my actions, without worrying about justifying following my instincts or what I’m going to put in the report.” She met Bobbi’s eyes. “I know you can handle yourself—more than, even—but this isn’t about you. I work best alone. I always have.”

“You work best alone when you’re not with Clint, you mean,” Bobbi said, the hurt just audible in her voice.

“Clint’s always felt like an extension of myself,” Natasha said. “It’s why we work so well together. I’m sorry, Bobbi.”

“Be smart,” she said after a long sigh, and Natasha knew she had won, “or, rather, don’t do anything stupid.”

“I won’t.”

“At least tell me what you’re planning on doing?” she asked.

Natasha smiled, watching the various expressions—confused, concerned, guarded—flit over Bobbi’s face at her sudden change in demeanor. “Whatever the good Captain tells me to do.”

* * *

Well, that was a lie.

“Agent Romanoff?” Rogers said, when he picked up the phone. At least he had learned how to use cellphones already—she supposed that had been high on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s priority list on things to catch him up on, in case they needed him.

“Hey, Rogers,” she said, adopting a friendly tone. Her notebook was balanced on her lap, a black pen laying against the border where the pages met. Her legs were tucked up underneath her, curled up in an armchair in one of her lesser known safehouses in Munich.

“I wasn’t expecting to hear from you,” he said. “You’ve been hard to reach since New York.”

“Been busy with S.H.I.E.L.D. duties,” she said. “We’ve been keeping tabs on you though, if you needed anything.”

“…Thanks.” He paused. “Why are you calling?”

“I need some information from you,” Natasha said. “I need you to tell me everything you can about James Buchanan Barnes.”

The line was silent for a full ten seconds, an eternity by phone call standards. “What?”

“Habits, likes and dislikes, climate preferences, anything at all would be helpful,” she said.

“Why?” Rogers said emphatically. “Buck’s been dead for almost seventy years.”

“He’s not dead,” Natasha said. “I thought someone would have told you by now.” _Who, exactly?_ she asked herself. All of this was classified. “After he fell from the train, he was taken by HYDRA scientists. At some point after HYDRA was destroyed, he was transferred to another group, and brainwashed and enhanced and turned into their personal assassin. He’s been carrying out hits since the seventies, and no one has been able to track him, or find him, or even figure out who’s running him.”

“No, in two years out of the ice, no one has thought to mention that my best friend is alive and out there—”

“Out there committing kidnappings and murders, but sure, alive,” Natasha said rather testily. Clint might be in the hands of the Winter Soldier, and she knew all too well what the Soldier was capable of—formerly war hero and POW Bucky Barnes or not.

“I can’t believe you, Romanoff.”

“My partner is missing,” Natasha said. “I am asking you to put aside your feelings and help.”

“So is mine, apparently!” She could hear his heavy breathing through the phone, his battle for control of himself. “Wait, Barton is missing?”

“I’m trying to find him, and it looks like the Winter Soldier—Bucky—may be involved. We just got intelligence that he may have escaped from his handlers and be operating on his own, so Bucky’s preferences and way of thinking might actually be helpful in finding him.”

“But if he escaped, why wouldn’t he come to me?” Rogers asked, the pain palpable in his voice. “He must know that I’m alive, it’s been all over the news…why wouldn’t he seek me out for help?”

“He may not be that much in control,” she said gently. “Or he may not remember you. These kinds of programs, they…they mess with your head. Erase your memories. But things bleed through. That’s why I need to know.”

“Okay,” Rogers said. “Okay. What do you need to know?”

“Are there any places he liked, that he would go?”

“Besides to me? I mean, we grew up in New York City, so that would be my first guess. God, could Bucky be living in the same city as me?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D.’s surveillance infrastructure is very robust in New York City, so honestly, I doubt it,” Natasha replied. “But anywhere else? Places in Europe that he liked during the war, for example, or places he may have mentioned in passing that he wanted to travel and visit.”

“Um, he disliked London,” Rogers said. “Said it was like home, but stuffier. He liked France though.”

“France,” Natasha said, writing it down in the notebook. “Any particular part of it?”

“He didn’t say. Or I don’t remember. We didn’t talk about traveling much. It wasn’t really doable, with our finances and my health issues.”

“All right, did he like cities or the countryside?”

“Both? He’d be more comfortable in a city though. We grew up in the thick of it.”

She noted that down. “What about climate?”

Rogers gave a rough laugh. “He hated New York in the summer.”

“Landscape? Beach, desert, forest, plains…”

“Forest, I think.”

She continued interrogating Rogers for over an hour before finally closing her notebook. “Well, that’ll narrow my search down a little.”

“Listen, Natasha…let me get on a plane and I can be where you are in fifteen hours, tops. I can help you search. I know him better than anyone. Just tell me where you are.”

“No,” she told him firmly. “I’m doing this, no one else. He’s not the man you remember, Steve. I can promise you that much.”

“But—”

“I’ll call you when it’s done,” Natasha said, and hung up the phone. She set it aside, then opened the book again, balancing it on the edge of the armchair and pulling her laptop toward her. Adding the new information she had gotten, she cross-referenced it with the data she had compiled—mostly from her own memory, as S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files were decidedly lacking on the Winter Soldier front. Known mission locations: several small towns in Germany while he served in the 107th Regiment, the Red Room on and off for a few years, Cairo, Berlin, Reykjavik, Brussels, Riyadh, Cape Town, Odessa. Known associates: HYDRA, the Red Room. Both of which—supposedly—collapsed years ago.

It was depressingly little to go on.

But Natasha was good at this. She had contacts, favors to call in with people too smart—or too scared—to tip anyone else off that she was looking. And that metal arm…the metal arm would be hard to hide.

Plus he had to be getting financing from somewhere, if only to pay for rent and food. That meant jobs. Employers. Possibly, bodies.

Munich was as good a place to start as any. It was in Germany, which was where the majority of James Barnes’s time in the service had taken place. It had good airport access to the rest of Europe, important now that she was flying commercial and waving a falsified diplomatic immunity credential to get her large cache of weapons through customs. And it was a city large enough for Barnes to get lost in, to let him blend in. Despite what Rogers had said about the countryside, Natasha knew she shared at least some training—some instincts—with the Soldier.

She _would_ find him. She _would_ find Barton. And she would not stop working until she did.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha meets her new interrogator.

_After her failed escape attempt, Barton has been reassigned. Her interrogation is now being overseen by Rumlow. Whoever that is._

Past.

Barton was right. Rumlow was a bastard.

Her head slammed into the interrogation table just hard enough to maximize the pain without doing any permanent damage to her cheekbone. “Well?” the man called Rumlow asked. “Ready to talk yet, Widow?”

Blood filled her mouth, and she spat some of it in his face. He reared back, swearing, and then yanked her by the hair again, slamming her face into the tabletop again. He lifted it, ripping hair follicles from her head, and placed his face, still dripping with a mixture of saliva and blood, right next to hers. “I want to know,” he growled, “who you sold those contracts to.” She could smell the tacos on his breath.

“Which ones?” she asked politely, feeling something grate in her jaw. Silence didn’t work as well for Rumlow as it had for Barton. It still didn’t mean he’d get any of the information he wanted.

Plus, it felt good to speak again.

“Jacob McCafferty.” His fist connected with her face again, exploding pain across her cheek and sending a sharp twinge through her neck. “Lisa Taudel.” Another punch. “Alastair Bealor.” His last punch was the strongest, the whiplash lighting her neck on fire.

“Brock,” Morse said from where she leaned against the wall in the corner.

He spun to face her. “Fury said I could do this my way,” he spat. “Barton lost his chance. You being here? That’s just a courtesy, sweetheart.” The blonde pursed her lips, but didn’t say anything else. Natasha got the sudden sense Morse hated Rumlow as much as she did. Something she could use?

“Sorry, did you mean Alastair Bealor, or Alastair Baylor?” Natasha asked, feigning confusion. “I _do_ seem to remember an Alastair _Baylor_ …I think he was my downstairs neighbor, actually. Had a cute cat.”

“Commie bitch,” Rumlow said, hitting her again.

Natasha almost smiled when he was done, because _this_ was what she was trained for. Not whatever nonsense Barton had made up.

“If you need me to spell it for you, you’ll just have to let me up,” Natasha offered, lifting her elbows. Her hands were shackled at the wrist to the center of the table, or Rumlow would be dead by now.

“I can do this all day,” Rumlow warned her, nostrils flared and visibly seething now. “I’ll make you talk.”

“Uh, actually, Rumlow, you _have_ done this all day,” Morse said, glancing at her watch. “It’s eight o’clock.”

He glared at her. “Do you know what it says on my badge, Agent?”

Morse shrugged. “Your name, presumably.” Natasha felt her admiration for the woman spike just a little, although she was too busy memorizing every part of this potential weak spot for it to matter much.

“And my clearance level,” Rumlow said. “Do you know what that is, Morse?”

“I don’t know…if it’s based on your attitude level, I’d say quite high.”

He didn’t take the bait. “Much higher than yours, Agent Morse. Which is why _I_ am first in line to lead one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s new STRIKE teams, and _you_ are stuck babysitting a hyperactive deaf kid with a penchant for bows and disobeying orders.”

The door burst open, slamming against the wall with a loud metal _clang_. Another man Natasha hadn’t seen before stood in the doorway, a good head shorter than the other two with close-clipped hair and a well-fitting suit. “Are you kidding me?” he asked, looking from one S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to the other. “Do you know how much useful intel you just leaked, _right in front of the prisoner_?” He held up one hand, counting on his fingers. “One, organizational secrets such as S.H.I.E.L.D.’s use of clearance levels. Two, Barton’s disability. Three, that you two are unprofessional children incapable of overseeing one interrogation alone together. Do I need to go on?”

“No, sir,” Morse said, looking chagrined. He looked at Rumlow.

“No, sir,” the man replied.

“Good. Morse, you’re off this assignment too. Go home and wait for further instructions.” For a moment she looked torn, then nodded and walked out. Natasha could hear the sound of her boots receding down the hallway. “Rumlow, resume tomorrow at 0800. And have some respect for the younger agents.” Rumlow gave a sharp nod and Natasha one last leer before tromping out the door. The other man withdrew a tiny set of keys from his belt and undid her cuffs, watching her carefully for any sign of movement. Natasha made none except to pull her arms back to herself, remaining seated until the man had left and the door closed behind him.

Alone again, Natasha rubbed the redness of her wrists and tried to ignore the stinging of her cheeks. Standing up and crossing to the mirror, she examined the red blotches scattered across them that would surely turn blue and purple by tomorrow’s session. Natasha took a deep, steadying breath. This was what she was trained for. She could survive this, as long as it took. Waiting for…well, nothing, really. The slight possibility of a Red Room assassin showing up to eliminate the possibility of her letting loose any state secrets. The larger possibility of finding her chance to escape, only to be on the run for the rest of her life, hunted by more parties than ever before. If they didn’t have a goddamn file on her greatest hits, maybe she’d have a shot…

No, the only real way out of this was death. Unfortunately, faking someone’s death was not a skill in her repertoire used much, as the Red Room treated deaths as warnings for the living and punishment for the dead. And no one hired a contract killer to save someone’s life. Plus, the ingredients were painstaking to get…a body double, a competent yet disreputable surgeon who could replace the prints, an inside job to fake the DNA results… At _minimum_. Faking a death was a lot harder than it had been in the seventies.

Turning away from the mirror as she heard the door open, she watched an unknown agent in a black tactical helmet place a tray of food on the table and scamper out again. She crossed over to it, eating everything off the tray despite the ache in her jaw and drinking several handfuls of water out of the sink. Then she completed her nightly set of calisthenics—halfway through which the room lights turned off automatically, bathing the cell in darkness—before lying down atop the S.H.I.E.L.D. mattress, staring up at the ceiling and waiting to fall asleep.

When she opened her eyes, she was not alone.

Natasha bolted upward, hand immediately forming a fist.

“Shhh,” said Barton, one finger over his lips. “They don’t know I’m here.”

“Like I’d believe that,” Natasha scoffed, heart still pounding. She slowly lowered her legs over one side of the bed to face him.

“Are you kidding? Fury would fire my ass if he ever found out,” Barton said.

“Uh-huh. What makes you think you’ll even survive this encounter long enough for that to be an issue?” The idiot wasn’t even standing behind the laser barrier.

“Because I’m asking nicely for you to please not murder me?” he said. “Um, this is me asking nicely.”

She considered him, then nodded. “Lucky for you I’m not in a murdery mood tonight.”

Barton cracked a grin. “Did I just hear the infamous Black Widow use the word ‘murdery’?”

“Oh, wait, feeling’s coming on…”

“No, no, sorry,” Barton said, although the smile still hung around his mouth. “I just came to see how you were doing. After Rumlow.”

“You were right. He’s an asshole.”

“Told you.” He tossed something soft and round at her. “Here.”

She caught it, recoiling from the wetness of the cloth. “What’s this?”

“Cool compress? It’s all I could steal from medical. Oh, and there’s some antiseptic in there if he ever breaks the skin.” The ball of wet cloth unraveled in her hands, revealing the promised ointment. She stared at it for a few seconds, then looked up at him again.

“You know your angle doesn’t make any sense, right?” Barton raised an eyebrow at her. “You can’t be both the righteous bastard incensed by all my work and the friendly face who tells stories and brings medicines after his agency’s pit-bull roughs me up,” she told him. “Good cop, bad cop 101, Barton. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Thanks for the tip; I’ll take it under advisement,” he replied easily. “See you tomorrow, Natasha.”

* * *

The days started to bleed together again, now that there was a new routine. Lights turned on with the arrival of breakfast. Rumlow arrived. Interrogation. There was no lunch break; Rumlow ate his right in front of her with bloodstained fingers. A knock at the door sometime later: S.H.I.E.L.D. calling off their dog. Dinner. Exercises. Lights out.

Barton.

A splash of cold water drenched her face. Rumlow threw the now empty cup to the side, bringing his nose inches from hers. “Is that what you get off on, Widow? Burning sick kids alive in the hospital children’s ward?” She could smell the turkey and arugula sandwich on his breath.

Natasha shrugged. “If you say so.”

“How much did you get paid for that job?”

She pretended to think about it. “Eighty-two cents. _If_ I did it.”

He hissed wordlessly, slapping her across the face. It was better than his knuckles, but marginally, given the patchwork of bruises across her cheekbones and jaw that he’d been perfecting all week. She took it, though, with an amused glance and letting through no indication of the pain, and took his next dozen blows, questions, and insults much the same way. At the end when the knock came, his chest was heaving, more from the frustration than the exertion.

“Well, I guess that’s my cue,” Rumlow said, stepping back. His eyes ran over her face, as if appreciating his handiwork. “See you tomorrow, Widow, unless you’ve decided to comply. Remember, your compliance will be rewarded.”

“With what, another punch?” Natasha snarked right back. Then she smiled sweetly. “See you tomorrow, Romley.”

His face darkened, and the man’s hand twitched toward the gun at his belt. It swerved at the last second to the keys to the handcuffs instead, and he unlocked them as quickly as he could before stalking out.

Only once the door had closed again did Natasha allow herself to relax, lifting her sore arms out of the position they had been locked in for the last eight or so hours. She pressed a light hand into her side, feeling it twinge and burn—Rumlow had discovered the use of his feet for parts of her body other than her face, although she suspected he was not allowed to break anything. She wondered if S.H.I.E.L.D. knew this was nothing compared to what she had experienced by her own handlers in the Red Room, who were not afraid to inflict real damage and surgically correct it later. S.H.I.E.L.D. lacked…creativity.

After eating dinner and two rounds of calisthenics, she sat on her bed in the darkness with her legs crossed waiting for Barton. He had not failed to show yet, further cementing her belief that his visits were just yet another interrogation tactic. She did not allow him to sneak up on her as he had the first night, and watched the door carefully as she waited. Some hour or hour and a half after lights-out he appeared, slipping through the cell door like a dark shadow.

“Hey,” he greeted her, all too comfortable in her presence. He crossed the room quickly and sat down against the wall perpendicular to her bed, stretching his legs out in front of him. Today, he tossed her a towel full of ice, and she stood up to wet it at the sink before pressing it to the side of her face. “So, what’s new?”

“Just plotting my escape,” she replied, as usual. Barton just gave her a dopey smile. He was not nearly as easy to rile up as Rumlow.

But he didn’t fully laugh it off this time; he raised an eyebrow and asked, “Oh? Do tell.”

She returned to her perch on the edge of the bed. “Two guards outside the door. Shift changes about a half hour after breakfast and a half hour after dinner. Tranq guns in their hands, but real ones on their belt. Make a distraction, take the door about fifty feet down on the right.”

He nodded. “I see. What kind of distraction?”

She considered the question, her lips twitching upward slightly when she thought of her answer. “Stabbing Rumlow.”

Barton grinned. “You know what, fair. When are you planning on setting this great breakout plan into motion?”

“Haven’t decided yet,” Natasha said, not quite lying. “Might not try.”

“Really?” he asked, leaning forward. The sudden intensity of his expression betrayed his interest, all playfulness gone.

“It’s not so bad here,” she said. “Two square meals a day, a bunk all to myself, lots of entertainment during the daytime hours…”

He sat back against the wall again, looking disappointed. “You haven’t thought more about what I said?”

“Which part?” Natasha asked, feigning ignorance.

“The part where there’s another option.”

She scoffed. “Right.”

“I know you don’t believe me,” Barton said. “But what other reason would I bring you here? You don’t have any valuable intel. Sure, there’s random stuff we want to know about your previous hits, but everything about the jobs you’ve run is basically moot—the target’s already dead.”

“Then you should have killed me,” Natasha told him bluntly.

He shrugged, getting to his feet. “So says Fury. But I brought you here because I thought you wanted to escape but didn’t know how.” Natasha stared at him, but he just kept going. “If I was wrong about that then you might as well kill me on your way out this time, because we all know you’ve been planning your escape since you got here and not that novice crap you just told me. And with your skills, there is no doubt in my mind you will escape eventually.” He looked at her. “So hurry up and choose, would you?”

Natasha found her voice again a second later. “Or maybe you’re just a little kid trying to get me to let you sit at the big kids table,” she told him. “Real spies don’t surrender in an interrogation. And real spies don’t start out working for S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“You think I started out working for S.H.I.E.L.D.?” Barton laughed, heading for the door. “No, I was a kid with a bow doing petty crime that turned into much, much bigger crime. Coulson believed I could be something different. Guess he was right.” He opened it, half his body through before he turned back to look at her. “Maybe I’m right about you too. Think about it.”


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha takes a trip to Malta.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild trigger warnings for this chapter; please hit "more notes" to read them if that's relevant to you.

_After the raid on the pseudo-HYDRA facility, Natasha left Bobbi and S.H.I.E.L.D. behind in her quest to find the Winter Soldier, and, by extension, Barton. She gathered some intel from a call to Steve Rogers and began her search in Munich._

Present _.   
_Five Months Since Barton’s Kidnapping.  
Twelve Days Since Leaving S.H.I.E.L.D.

Munich was a dead-end. That much was clear very quickly. So then it was on to Berlin, and then to Amsterdam. Now she was in Malta, following the faintest of leads that a certain Ian Quinn had hired an unsavory character to do some of the dirty work that his pristine, millionaire defense-contractor hands couldn’t handle. The connection to the Winter Soldier was tenuous at best, but Malta held its own appeal—it was one of the few countries in which S.H.I.E.L.D. had no jurisdiction, no presence, and no surveillance. In other words, it was the perfect place to hide, if one knew he was being hunted.

Malta also had a thriving tourist scene, thanks to the sandy beaches and giant sea cliffs along its southern coast. She supposed those same cliffs were why Quinn had picked this place, a large estate on the edge of the sea fifty to seventy feet up from the rocky shoreline. The rest of the estate was surrounded by electric fences and round-the-clock surveillance, so it was to the sea she went.

Looking like a tourist and with hair temporarily dyed black, Natasha rented a large, two-person sea kayak from the nearest public beach she could find, a good four miles down the coast. She paid in cash taken from her latest safehouse, left a fake ID as collateral, and retreated to a somewhat more private section of the beach where she had stashed her equipment under a sandy, hollowed-out tree long. She packed it into the front seat of the kayak and lashed the second oar to the side of it with a length of black nylon rope, in case she somehow lost the first one. Then she hauled it to the edge of the beach, pushing it into the clear blue waves until the water reached her mid-calf. She clambered into the second seat, balancing her weight carefully upon entry to ensure the kayak wouldn’t tip over. Pushing off from the sand with one shove of her oar, Natasha navigated out into the ocean proper.

The waves made the kayak rise and fall, rocking her back and forth even as she cut through them. Her arms developed a steady, but not painful, burn as she made deep, continuous sweeps with the oar, first one side and then the other. The beach and the brightly colored dots of tourists on it gradually began to fade behind her, disappearing altogether as she made a turn around the natural curvature of the island and a shelf of rock hid it from view.

She paused to rest twice during her journey. During the first, she withdrew a hat from the duffel bag nestled in the seat in front of her and put it on, staving off heat and redness from the unrelenting sun hanging high above the water. During the second, she quaffed a few mouthfuls of liquid for her parched throat and located her phone, setting it between her knees with her current coordinates showing. As she traveled, she made sure not to stray too far from the beaches and cliffs, lest she be sucked out too far into the deep ocean, but was also wary of cutting too close and upending the kayak on a rock hidden just beneath the surface of the water. Maintaining such a delicate balance was both tiring and chaotic but it passed the time easily, with little energy for the other, more despairing thoughts that had crept up on her, consuming her night and day.

Her phone gave a happy chirp about an hour after she had set out, and Natasha knew she had reached the coordinates she wanted. Sure enough, the cliffs here were much higher than the smaller ones near the tourist beaches, with zero sandy shore beneath them and jagged rocks, both hidden and visible, at their base. She paid closer attention to the GPS now as she navigated herself nearer, alternating between examining the cliff face for an area with plentiful hand-and-footholds, the water at the base for a safe place to stash the kayak, and glancing back at the phone, making sure that when she reached the top she would still be within the bounds of Quinn’s estate.

She saw what she thought would likely be her best bet a few minutes later—a cliff riddled with pockets and holes that curved down and into itself at the very bottom, creating a small overhang that would protect her kayak—a bright, unfortunate orange color—from sight if someone happened to look down from above. Natasha paddled carefully closer, scanning the water for any rocks lurking underneath. While capsizing on one wouldn’t kill her, she didn’t fancy the idea of deep-diving for her duffel and the rest of her stuff.

When she reached the edge of the cliff, she untied the extra oar and lashed the kayak and the oar to a nearby spire of rock to keep it from floating away. Then, balancing carefully, she untucked her legs from their cramped position and slowly rose to her feet, the kayak wobbling precariously beneath her, still bobbing with the waves. She bent slowly at the knees, then jumped over the edge, cold water rushing up to meet her. She sank two, three, four feet underwater, strands of hair that escaped her braid floating around her head like a halo before kicking out her legs and rising swiftly to the surface again. The kayak was thankfully still upright, and Natasha treaded water a little ways out from it, shading her eyes with one hand to stare up at the rock face, trying to ascertain the best spot to begin her climb.

Once she had found it, she strapped the necessary equipment to herself from out of her duffel and tied her second, hundred-foot rope to a small backpack and her belt. After making sure this rope was loose and wouldn’t get caught on anything and drag her pack into the water—firing soggy guns was always a good time—she swam up to the cliff face, dragging herself vertically out of the water via a shelf of rock that served as two handholds. With some trial and error, she found the first places to put her feet easily enough, and began her climb.

It was slow-going, and inexplicably more tiring than Natasha remembered it from the last time she had done this sort of thing, until she thought about the fact that her clothing was probably holding a good ten or twenty extra pounds of water right now. The fact that her hands and feet were wet didn’t help, and nor did the hard-soled flats she was wearing that were a poor substitution for real rock climbing shoes. Unfortunately, those were almost worse than heels for long distance running if she wanted any sort of speed, and packing four different pairs of shoes for this venture wasn’t an option. 

True all-weather boots, now that was a thing Stark could design to be helpful, Natasha thought as she reached a dead-end in the rock and was forced to lower herself carefully back down a few holds to try and find another route. And not those ugly, blocky things only built for rain and snow that no one would dare wear in the sunshine, much less as part of any sort of formal attire. Boots that could retract and reform into different shapes as necessary—non-slip, waterproof, curved and pointed for rock climbing—now that would be truly useful. 

She lost her grip on one particularly narrow bit of rock, and the sudden extra weight she was putting on her feet caused pieces of those holds to break away entirely, bits of rock falling thirty feet below into the ocean. Natasha gritted her teeth as adrenaline flooded her body, the three fingers she was dangling from burning and rubbed raw from the pain. She swung her body to the left, scrabbling with every available limb to find another point of purchase on the rock, and ended up with her body wedged in a strange crouched position, one foot pressed against an outjutting of rock with all her strength, the other foot braced squarely on top of it. Only the pressure and friction her body could exert from left to right kept her from slipping off the cliff and into the ocean below. The scaling of the cliff had taken her off several yards to the right from where she’d started, making the kayak invisible now and the probability of smashing her skull in on some rocks considerably higher.

With her free hand, Natasha withdrew a large metal spike from a pouch at her belt, driving it into a nearby crevice as hard as she could. The metal cut into her as her right hand closed around it, but the leverage from both hands allowed her feet to one by one find more stable holds. Once she had achieved something close to stability again, she took a deep breath and peered upwards despite the blinding nature of the sun. Only thirty, forty feet to go.

When Natasha reached the top of the cliff, she got one knee up, then the other, then collapsed on the flat surface of the top. She lifted her stinging, smarting hands in front of her face to find them full of small cuts, with gravel deeply imbedded in her flesh. Brushing them off best she could, she rolled over and rose to her feet. Ignoring the way her limbs trembled with exertion, she backed away from the edge as far as she dared so as to not set off any security alerts and then took in hand the still-limp length of black nylon extending from her belt to somewhere below. She began to pull on it, one hand over the other, with rope pooling quickly at her feet. On one such pull, the weight increased suddenly as the extra length ran out, the end of the rope dragging her pack up with it. She continued to pull until finally her backpack appeared at the edge of the cliff. Natasha drank half a water bottle out of it and spared a little of the liquid to rinse her hands before belting on the handguns and other weapons out of it that she hadn’t wanted the weight of during the climb. Then, after stashing the rope under a pile of rocks, she consulted her phone as to the correct direction and headed off towards the main buildings of the estate. Time to find out if all her effort had been worth it.

* * *

It hadn’t. That was what Natasha was thinking as she dashed across Quinn’s perfectly manicured lawn, security agents hot on her tail, gunfire whipping at her back.

She had gotten in easily enough. Disabled a few keycard entrances, sweet-talked a maid into giving her directions before knocking her out and hiding her in a hall closet. But there was nothing in Quinn’s computers, his paper files, or anything else to indicate he’d been working with the Winter Soldier, and nothing about Barton.

But she must have tripped an alarm somewhere, because all of a sudden a dozen guards were on her tail, shouting in a mixture of English and Maltese and waving their semi-automatic weapons around.

Natasha skirted around one edge of a large, rectangular, aquamarine pool and simply leaped over the other edge. A spray of bullets splashed into the water behind her and she forced her aggrieved muscles to put on another burst of speed, sprinting full tilt in the direction of the cliffs she had climbed up. She ran in a zig-zag pattern—her suit would provide some protection from the bullets, but it would hurt like a son of a bitch at the very least, depending on what size rounds they were using.

When she reached the edge of the cliff, Natasha didn’t hesitate. She jumped straight off of it, using her momentum to put as much distance as possible between her and the cliff face and the jagged rocks that waited at the bottom of it.

Her legs were spread apart from her mid-run leap, and she closed them as quickly as she could, crossing her legs at the ankles and holding the position as tightly as she could. One arm crossed across her chest, elbow tucked in as close as possible, and the other smothered her mouth and nose with a bruising grip. Her eyes found the horizon, as she had been taught, and her feet angled downwards into a point just as she hit the water.

Pain exploded across her feet and legs as she shot downwards in a thundering plume of bubbles, but she kept them locked in position until the bubbles had faded away and she had slowed to a drift. Her underarms ached from where the backpack yanked at them, but that was fading too, leeched away by the coldness of the water. It was dark all around her, but she released the hand clamped around her mouth and nose and left a few precious air bubbles escape pointing her unmistakably upward. Kicking with her feet, she propelled herself towards the surface, feeling as though her lungs might burst but refusing to let them as the watery sunlight loomed enticingly ever nearer.

Her head broke through the surface and she drew breath immediately, feeling the onslaught of panic signals from her respiratory system fade. She twisted around, searching, and located the bright orange kayak. Natasha struck out for it with everything she had though it was only twenty feet away, and only when she too was sheltered by the rock overhang did she dare let herself catch her breath, treading water half-heartedly with her legs and holding onto the buoyant kayak for support. A moment later, she watched as shots peppered the ocean surface beyond her, creating little splashes of water wherever they hit. The taste of salt was sharp on her tongue as she waited them out, and when the shots stopped she dunked her head again and swam out. Against the churning ocean, the bob of her head with its dyed black hair would be far less noticeable than the kayak itself. Once she had swum out far enough, she looked back at the cliff edge to make sure they were gone.

Natasha packed all of her belongings into the kayak again and started out as quickly as she could, in case Quinn decided, once his security had briefed him, to search for a body to be certain of the intruder’s demise. It was slower going than when she had arrived—the dive off the cliff and the subsequent adrenaline left her body somewhat reeling, and the level of physical exertion she had expended in the last few hours was the most she had since breaking her ribs only four weeks prior, not to mention her wrecked hands trying to maneuver the oar.

_Whup-whup-whup._ Natasha’s head shot upward and she scanned the skies. Sure enough, a helicopter branded with the Quinn Worldwide appeared over the cliff edge some distance behind her. Scanning for somewhere to hide, her eyes alighted upon a set of deep sea caves just up ahead, and she rowed toward them as fast as her arms and hands could manage. Her kayak slid silently inside the middle one and darkness enveloped her. Against the back wall, the sea crashed against the rocks and got sucked under into smaller cracks and eddies, so she stayed away from it, heading for the darker of the two side walls and using her oar to keep herself from moving too far in or from sliding out. The sound of the chopper was getting closer, audible over the crashing of the waves on rocks that echoed throughout the cave.

Then the sound faded away again and Natasha floated atop her kayak, catching her breath. The visibility from the sky when looking for an orange kayak would be excellent, unfortunately. The safest thing to do would be to wait for nightfall, knowing that the only way they would spot her then even with the chopper would be a spotlight, which she could theoretically avoid. So Natasha settled in to wait, her back cramping from the awkward sitting position of the kayak and her hands stinging every time they touched the salt. Her teeth began chattering until she clamped them together around the first hour mark, soaked as she was without the sun to warm her. She drank her second bottle of water as she waited and ate a couple power bars for energy, despite the pain dampening her hunger. At last, when night had fallen, she rowed out of the cave and the last three miles to the beach.

It was empty now, closed probably, and Natasha dragged the kayak back onto the sand next to the rental hut and lifted her duffel out of it, which was once again filled with all of her equipment. The fake ID kept by the rental place—also now very closed—had a fake name and a fake photo, so there was no risk leaving it. She trudged up the beach and to the road, using her phone to call a cab. When it arrived five minutes later, she took it and got dropped off in downtown, where she found the first hotel with a vacancy sign and booked herself a room. She almost paid cash but at the last second switched to her S.H.I.E.L.D. credit card, knowing Bobbi would be grateful to know where she was.

The hotel room was standard, with a double bed and dark carpeting that was easier to make look clean, but what Natasha cared about most was the bathtub, which was deep enough for a full soak. Still shivering, she peeled off her wet tacsuit and left it in a soggy pile on the floor in favor of the warm bathwater. She made good use of the time there while waiting for her body temperature to rise by working all of the gravel and bits of rock out of her hands and thoroughly washing out all of the small cuts and lacerations, leaving her fingers stinging but functioning remarkably better. After that, she drained the tub and showered under the warm spray, working the salt and sweat and dye out of her hair. Once the water cascading down her body was clear and dye-free again, she shut off the water and rubbed her body down with one of the thin hotel towels, being particularly careful around the bruising on her lower legs, ankles, and feet from her impact with the water. A few of the cuts and scrapes on her hands she bandaged up, but most she left alone, minor enough to heal on their own.

When all that was done, she forced herself to disassemble, dry, and clean at least one handgun out of her waterlogged backpack before she practically fell into the bed with it, tucking it under her pillow. A few seconds later, she was asleep.

She did not remember what she dreamed about—it was several things, memories of several different places and several different times. A cold room, another bed, piercing blue eyes in the darkness, the weight of expectations heavy upon her shoulders, knowing she was no different from the girls who came before or after, knowing no matter what was taken, she must not cry. The Barton Farmhouse, Cooper’s voice cold and distraught and accusing.

Everything was cold, but it was neither of those dreams that woke her in the middle of the night, chest heaving despite the chilly bands of steel taking over her insides, whiting out all rational thinking in her brain. She scrambled for the edge of the bed, thrashing her legs out of the confines of the blankets, and sat on the edge of it, gasping for air. Natasha had just enough presence of mind not to go for her gun, to know that the threat wasn’t real, but only that. At last when she had some semblance of self back she had the wherewithal to think that it had been years since her last episode, years since she’d last lost control…and years since Clint hadn’t been at her side, ready to talk her down or take her down if necessary. Natasha rubbed at the inside of her wrists with her thumb, trying to remove the sensation of phantom metal scraping against them. When that didn’t help, she pressed her fingers into the myriad layers of cuts on her hands, using the pain to help her focus. Fresh pain, made with something sharp would be better, but after a few minutes her hands were dripping blood on the dark carpet and her mind was somewhat clearer, the panic fading like a soon-forgotten dream.

Finally, finally, when she felt calm and in control and sane enough to lay back down, she did so, switching over to the other side of the bed that is not soaked with her sweat. Hazy images of Clint and the Winter Soldier swam together in her mind. As she slipped off back to sleep, there was only one clear thought left.

London tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Trigger Warnings:**  
>  Self-Harm by deliberately hurting self/causing pain response  
> Implied/referenced self-harm via cutting  
> Implied sexual abuse as a teen
> 
> Thanks for reading! I would love to know what you thought :)


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha agrees to switch sides.

_Rumlow’s interrogation methods are standard, and nothing Natasha can’t handle. However, for some reason Barton keeps showing up in her cell at night._

Past.

“You had enough yet, bitch?” Rumlow asked, swinging at her face again. “‘Cause I could keep going. I’m kinda having fun here, so I am perfectly happy to keep doing this, unless you tell us what we want to know.”

“Yes, I can see that.” He might have chipped a tooth with that last blow—she was not quite sure, but something felt off in her mouth. “It’s just sad you’re not very good at it.” He wound up for another hit. “I mean, I’m assuming this is as hard as you can punch?”

Lowering his fist, he got in her face instead, hot breath washing over her face. “Oh, I can punch harder, girl.”

“Then why don’t you? Too afraid of your boss?” she asked, smiling through her exhaustion. “It’s nice to see someone so submissive to their superiors—reminds me of the Soviets, actually. Must make you a good little agent for Fury.” She leaned forward; she had his attention—his simmering rage—now. “Of course, in Russia, they were allowed to have a little more leeway. You see, nothing you’ve done here is particularly impressive. Or effective. Waterboarding—heard of that? Or a shock chair. Or cutting into someone while they’re awake to watch you play with their organs. _You have nothing on where I was made_.” She paused, as if thinking. A vein bulged in Rumlow’s neck, but he seemed lost for words. “I guess you don’t have the balls for it. I didn’t know S.H.I.E.L.D. had a neutering program.”

Rumlow bellowed, clearing the table in one giant leap. With one arm, he yanked the chair out from under her, sending it skittering across the room with a series of metal _clangs_. She fell downward, suspended only by her outstretched and shackled wrists. Her arms ached where the edge of the interrogation table cut into them. “It’s probably a good thing,” Natasha ground out, meeting Rumlow’s furious gaze. “Better for the survival of the species and all that…”

With a roar, Rumlow began pummeling every part of her body he could reach, landing kick after kick to her ribs and midsection. Stars imprinted themselves across her vision as he struck her in the head with a closed fist several times in quick succession until she was more sagging from the table than having any part in holding herself up. Her survival instincts nearly kicked in and her leg shifted closer to her assailant so as to sweep him off his feet but she pushed them down, relegating herself to only feeling the blows as they came and fighting to stay conscious. Rumlow reached out and slammed her forehead against the table.

The door banged open, or at least Natasha thought it did in a dazed sort of way. Two Clint Bartons entered the room, and she blinked twice, trying to clear her double vision. “Rumlow, you complete bastard, lay off her!” he shouted. “That’s enough! She’s not going to break from you just hitting her—can’t you see it’s what she wants?” Her head slammed into the table again, briefly whiting out her vision, and she could hear Rumlow’s laugh.

“You think this is what the cunt wants, Barton?”

“Get the _fuck_ off of her!”

“Clint!” A pair of Bobbi Morses entered Natasha’s vision, grabbing the Clints’ arms. “You’re out of line, and disobeying orders. Get out of here.”

“I don’t have to obey you; we’re not married anymore,” Barton said, shaking her off. He shoved Rumlow backwards and away from Natasha.

She couldn’t quite see what happened between them, but Rumlow backed away. “Fury’ll hear about this,” he sneered. “Say goodbye to your badge.”

Turning away from him, Barton reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of silver keys, quickly undoing Natasha’s cuffs. He caught her before she hit the floor.

“What, you come to save me?” she slurred, looking up at him. Then she passed out.

* * *

When her eyes opened, she was in a different room entirely, with gray ceiling tiles. A monitor beeped steadily next to her and she turned her head to look at it, watching the spikes that were her heartbeat. There was an IV in one arm, and her head swam with more than just Rumlow’s blows. Opiates.

Turning to her other side, she saw Barton lounging in a chair close to her bedside. “You have a death wish,” he said.

“Well, you’re not wrong.”

Barton gestured outward. “Welcome to S.H.I.E.L.D. medical. Rumlow broke your ribs. Two of them. And banged up your head pretty good, although they don’t think you have a concussion.” Natasha searched for something to say to that, but everything was just too foggy to feel one way or another about what Rumlow had done to her. But he was still looking at her expectantly.

“Why are you here, Barton?” she asked, doing her best not to garble her words, even if her tongue felt thick and sluggish.

“Because I think you can still do good,” he told her readily.

“I left good in the rearview mirror a long time ago,” she reminded him. “You know what I’ve done. And your analysts haven’t found everything.”

“Well, ‘good’ isn’t necessarily something you are,” Barton told her. “Yeah, sure, some people like Coulson are just ‘good,’ in general, all the time. It’s easy for them. But for people like you and me? Good isn’t who we are. Good is a choice. It’s what we _do_ that matters.”

“It’s a lost cause, Barton,” Natasha sighed. “If this is why you didn’t kill me like you were supposed to, you wasted your time.”

“I’m not saying you’ll ever be good. S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t require us to be good. But with your skillset? You could _do_ a lot of good.”

“As if S.H.I.E.L.D. would ever trust me enough for that,” Natasha murmured, sinking back on the pillows.

Barton cocked his head, a strange glimmer in his eye. “Coulson’s special like that.”

“The man who took you in,” Natasha remembered.

“Yeah. You willing to give it a try?”

She considered it, considered him. Considered a life outside running and hiding. “Yes.” The corners of her mouth twitched upward. “Does my consent count when I’m drugged?”

“Oh, don’t worry, there’ll still be a mountain of paperwork to do after this when you’re not doped up,” Barton promised. “And a meeting with the Boss Man, probably.”

“Fury,” Natasha said.

“That’s him. The one and only. I can go let them know now, or I can stay here with you, if you want.”

“Why would I want you to stay?” she asked.

“No reason,” he shrugged. “No escape attempts from medical, though. Best behavior from here on out ’til I get Fury to agree.”

She looked down, seeing her unrestrained wrists. “You trust me. More than you should.”

“Don’t prove me wrong,” he said, grinning.

* * *

“Good news,” Barton said, prancing into medical. Natasha was sitting up this time, tight white bandages wrapped around her torso to protect her broken ribs and a S.H.I.E.L.D. nurse bustling around. Natasha slid her legs over the side of the bed. “We got a meeting with Fury.”

“What’s the bad news?” Natasha asked.

“Well, he doesn’t know about the meeting yet. I just had Hill put it on his calendar,” he clarified. “It’s in ten minutes—you ready to go?”

“Just let me—” The nurse reached in, but Natasha was already sliding the IV needle out of her arm and ripping off the monitor on her finger. “Never mind, then.”

“Ready,” she told him, standing up. The fog of sedatives had left her mind about an hour ago, and despite her ribs she felt physically fit enough for whatever this Fury might throw at her. Or what she might have to throw at him.

“Awesome. This way,” Barton said, leading her out the double doors. Almost immediately, men in full tactical gear stepped to surround them, but he waved them off. They stepped back again doubtfully, but let them both pass. “Fury’s office is near the top of the building,” he narrated as they walked toward the elevator. She dutifully pressed the ‘up’ button and stood back to wait for it. When the doors opened, they were met with a familiar face, who lifted one eyebrow at first Natasha, and then Barton.

“Is she supposed to be out and about?” Bobbi Morse asked.

“We’re going to see Fury,” Barton said, gesturing Natasha inside and stepping in after her.

“And her six-person, round-the-clock security team is _where_ , exactly?”

“She’s agreed to work with S.H.I.E.L.D.,” he replied. “And she’s with me.”

“ _Oh_ , she’s with _you_. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize—that totally makes everything better,” Morse said. She rolled her eyes. “Fury’s going to murder you.”

“Nah,” Barton said indifferently. He caught Natasha’s questioning look and the way she was edging toward the door. “He didn’t become the head of an international spy agency by murdering his best agents.”

“Best at being a pain in his ass, you mean,” Morse said. The elevator slowed to a stop, and she exited onto a floor much more filled with people, wearing suits and tac gear and what looked to be evening formal wear alike. “For what it’s worth, I’ll back your play, Clint.” Her eyes drifted toward Natasha even as the doors began to close. “Good luck, Romanoff.”

Barton was grinning as the elevator resumed its ascent. “For an ex-wife, she’s not so bad.”

“Fury’s going to be angry with you,” Natasha surmised.

“Oh, very. But that’s why we’re not giving him any warning—he’s less scary if you don’t give him time to prep for it.”

She thought about what Madame B or Ivan would have done if she’d ever pulled a stunt like this in the Red Room, feeling her insides grow cold, her fingertips tingling with the intense urge to run, to climb up the elevator shaft to freedom. But Barton didn’t look fearful of what was coming next. He bumped his shoulder casually with hers and ignored the way she tensed because of it. The elevator dinged, and they walked out into a hallway less populated than the last one but more so than medical had been. Agents in suits far outnumbered any others on this floor, men and women alike.

Barton stopped in front of a nondescript door very similar to any of the others in the hallway except for the words on the thin black plaque on its front. _Nicholas J. Fury, Director_. He checked his watch. “Just two things before we go in,” Barton said. “Let me do the talking, and don’t ask about the eyepatch.”

“Okay,” Natasha said, shifting uneasily. This time, he didn’t gesture her through first.

The office of Nicholas Fury was large, but not overly so. One wall was entirely made of window, looking out over a few city buildings and a large gray river. On the other, several screens were set into the wall, displaying what looked to be a mix of security feeds, news reports, and operational agendas. The man himself stood behind a large mahogany desk near the window, leaning over several computer monitors. An eyepatch was strapped over his left eye, and he wore no S.H.I.E.L.D. insignia but a large black trenchcoat. “Hill, assemble two strike teams,” he said without looking up. “Full tactical, and put the building on lockdown.”

“Sir,” Barton said.

Fury looked up, eyes—eye—sliding from Barton to Natasha, who stood behind him with her hands lightly clasped behind her ramrod straight back. “Belay that order,” he said, reaching up to tap his earpiece. “Barton apparently decided to take her on a tour.” He carefully took out the earpiece and set it down on his desk. “Would you like to explain why you broke all protocol, released a high-security prisoner, and brought her unrestrained into my office?”

“Yes, sir,” Barton said. “She wants to defect.”

Fury looked at him. “Told you this, did she?”

“Yes, sir.”

The director of S.H.I.E.L.D. seemed to take a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling for a few moments. “Bypassing the fact that _you believed her_ , defect from where? I wasn’t aware we had any intel that she was being run by any other party.”

“Well, no. But she wants to work for S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Do you remember the conversation we had when you first brought her in, against orders?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you remember the part where I promised to send you to the coldest part of Siberia for the next ten years if any agent died due to your actions?”

“I do,” Barton answered.

“You better pack your bags,” Fury said, advancing toward Barton. One dark finger hovered close to his chest. “Everything she does is on you. That really where you want to take this?”

“I know the consequences,” he replied, meeting Fury’s eyes.

“God damn it, Barton, this is the most irresponsible shit you have ever pulled,” Fury swore. “I should bench your ass to Siberia anyway.”

“She could be a good agent,” he insisted. “It’s worth the risk. Sir.”

The man turned away from him, bringing Natasha under his unwavering gaze. “And you, Romanoff? What have you to say about all this? Convince me that I shouldn’t just finish what Barton couldn’t, and shoot you right now to save myself the headache.”

“You couldn’t,” Natasha told him simply.

“Excuse me?”

“You’d try to use the gun in your belt. There’s probably another strapped to your leg somewhere, and one in the desk, but you’d go for the belt—it’s easier to draw quickly, to take me by surprise. Left side, based on how your coat hangs. In the time it would take for you to draw it, I would be behind Barton. While you tried to get a clear shot, I would smash the window with the paperweight on your desk. There’s a ledge two stories below that a few of your agents use for smoke breaks because of the access via the emergency fire escape.”

Fury stared at her, then crossed over to the window and looked down. “So there is.” His eye narrowed. “And why do you want to join S.H.I.E.L.D., Romanoff?”

“I don’t,” Natasha replied. She caught Barton’s look and added, “Particularly. But even if I did escape, you tracked me down once. Jobs are hard to come by when you have to keep looking over your shoulder. And, as far as agencies go… Barton disobeyed your orders, and he’s still standing, and still an agent. That’s a lot better than places I’ve been.”

“Got any details about those… _places_?” Fury asked. “Since your interrogation was going so well.”

Natasha released her hands from their clasped position, crossing her arms in front of her. “I was trained in a place called the Red Room Academy in Russia. I left, and it has since been dismantled after the fall of the Soviet Union.”

Fury was silent, studying her. Natasha guessed she didn’t look very intimidating, wearing white prison clothes and the slippers she’d got in medical. Not to mention the bruises. “Bobbi also supports bringing her on as an agent,” Barton said helpfully.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Of course she does. All right, Barton, Romanoff—she can work for S.H.I.E.L.D. in a preliminary capacity, with the possibility of full agent status. But there are conditions.”

“She’ll meet them,” Barton promised.

“A complete medical work-up has already been done, but I want full cooperation with a psych eval,” Fury said. “A written report on any valuable intel she has, as well as all the details on this ‘Red Room.’ And she’ll have to fill out the intake paperwork, of course.”

Barton glanced at Natasha, and she nodded.

“I’m not finished,” Fury said. “She is not to go anywhere on this base or outside of it without escort. Most of the time, that will be you, as she is now under your charge. She will be assigned one of the living quarters on level three, and the door will be locked at night until you come to pick her up in the morning. She will not be allowed any weapons except during supervised times on the shooting ranges and in the gym, so that you can fully assess her abilities.”

“Understood, sir,” Barton agreed.

Fury turned to her. “Miss Romanoff?”

“Understood,” she echoed.

“Understood, _sir_.”

“Understood, _Nick_ ,” she replied. Barton let out something between a startled laugh and a yelp.

The director of S.H.I.E.L.D. looked between them. “Good Lord, now there’s two of them.” He sighed, pointing toward the door. “Get your smartasses out of here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the table begins to turn...
> 
> I would love to hear what you thought :)


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A milestone approaches, and the isolation gets to Natasha. Just a little bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy one month to the Black Widow movie! Oh, wait, no, never mind... :(

_Even after getting intel from Steve Rogers, Natasha’s searches in Berlin, Amsterdam, Malta, and London turned up nothing._

Present _.   
_Five Months Since Barton’s Kidnapping.

London was a bust. For all that she’d kept her ear to the ground—coaxing, extorting, and even threatening various lowlifes for information—there was no indication of anyone matching the Winter Soldier’s characteristics or MO in the area that wasn’t quickly debunked.

She moved on to Paris, quickly getting a tip about a “dark, long-haired man with a prosthetic” working out of an office building. So Natasha was sitting in front of a cafe with a half-drunk latte on the table beside her, high-heeled feet tapping out a pattern on the cobblestone. She had a book with her too for show if need be, but for now she played the contented European, if not Paris native, people watching and ignoring the clouds of cigarette smoke drifting along the street. She sipped at her coffee again, looking down the avenue to the right at the bustle of people headed to work or out for a morning stroll, but keeping one eye on the entrance to the office building. A man was approaching it, but he was the wrong build for the Winter Soldier. Much too short. And balding.

Sighing, Natasha took another drink from her cup and resigned herself to the long haul. Two women were approaching the building and she studied their faces as well, just in case, but neither looked familiar. Down the same street, two cars honked at each other repeatedly before one sped off angrily, almost hitting a third car in its haste. She turned to her left, watching as a large man in an gray hoodie sprinted away from the cafe next door, an irate waitress running after him yelling expletives in French. The chase only lasted about thirty seconds, and the waitress returned sullen and out of breath, muttering darkly about the audacity of tourists nowadays. Natasha returned her attention to the building she was canvassing, fingers around her coffee mug.

Another man was approaching the door, and Natasha’s eyes narrowed. Around six feet, longish brown hair, arms covered by sweater sleeves. He seemed to be walking with a limp though, and as he mounted the two steps up to the building’s door Natasha caught sight of the metal-and-plastic contraption that was his leg as his pant leg lifted briefly.

Well, there was her man with a prosthetic. Prosthetic leg. It wasn’t the Winter Soldier, and it was another wasted morning, just like all of them lately. Sighing, she stood up from her table, draining the rest of her coffee in one fell swoop and leaving a tip pinned under the mug. Then she walked away, quickly becoming lost in the throng of people on the sidewalk.

* * *

Natasha only allowed herself a few hours’ sleep before she was out on the balcony again, just as the first streaks of red were painting the sky above the horizon. The stone was cold as she sat down on it, abandoning her night-vision binoculars for regular ones. The air was equally frigid against her bare skin, although there isn’t much of that. Her hands were gloved for now and her jacket zipped up to just above her collarbone—she didn’t wear the self-provided nooses everyone else called scarves. She surveyed the house with eagle eyes, watching for any signs of movement and changing out the SD card from her camera into her tablet. Natasha pulled up the pictures of the house with the latest time stamp, then systematically compared the image to the house she saw now, quadrant by quadrant. Satisfied that nothing had changed since 2:30 A.M. last night, she settled down to watch. 

Letting her eyes rest for a minute, she closed them briefly, ears taking over her normal level of alertness. Five days. Five days she’d been staking out this house on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, waiting for Sergei Yemelin to come out. Her tablet was filled with pictures of his various doubles, but they always came back negative. It was never him. 

And Clint had been missing for more than five months. Tomorrow, half a year. Somehow she couldn’t stand the thought of facing tomorrow. 

Around noon she broke for lunch, meaning stepping inside for two minutes to prepare herself one before she was back out again. Opening the sliding door, she set her plate down on the railing, then picked up her binoculars again, searching for movement. Nothing. Still holding them up to her eyes, she reached for her sandwich, taking a bite before setting it back on the plate and settling back to watch a closer window. She adjusted the knob on the binoculars to put them in focus again. After a few more seconds, she swept the grounds once and then set them down next to her. Natasha reached for her sandwich again.

This time when she lifted it to her mouth, her forefinger touched something absolutely cold in comparison to the warm toasted bread. Alarmed, she dropped the sandwich back onto the plate and watched as it nearly plummeted ten stories downward onto the concrete. Luckily, the plate merely clattered on the stone ledge underneath the railing a few times and she was able to slap her hand over it before it toppled over. Natasha stared down at it suspiciously. There was a hole in her bread, about the size of her smallest fingertip—she could see the yellow cheese underneath. She frowned. Perhaps that had been there before, and she just hadn’t noticed it in her hurry. Either way, a small hole in her bread was nothing to be alarmed about. This entire situation just had her high-strung, never mind her growing sense of paranoia that someone had been watching her since Paris—since London, maybe.

She thought about how Clint would be laughing about her right now, sent into a flurry of suspicions over a piece of bread. Then she told herself to get a grip. 

Picking up the binoculars again and taking another bite, she watched the maid through the third story window of the building across the way. Early fifties and thin, with arms like sticks as she moved the vacuum cleaner. Natasha shifted downwards to the front door to the estate, then to the high, ornate gate leading to the street. Nothing. She set the sandwich back down on the plate, then headed inside for a glass of water. Natasha brought it back out with her, did her visual rounds again, and picked up her sandwich.   
The hole was bigger now. And straight through the sandwich. Bread, cheese, meat, lettuce—all gone, in a hole just smaller than the knuckle of her smallest finger. She wasn’t imagining it. She set the sandwich back down warily, looking carefully around. Natasha couldn’t fathom what gain her enemies could get from putting a hole in her food—poison? the methodology didn’t even make sense—but something was definitely not right.

Her eyes fell on a bird perched on the corner edge of the balcony. It cocked its head at her, then hopped closer. Its scaly feet hooked along the edge of the wood railing each time it landed, its jet black, beady eyes regarding her. Then it pecked straight down into the hole of her sandwich quickly, one, two, three, four times, coming up with crumbs and bits of cheese on its beak.

Natasha regarded the bird suspiciously, waving her hands in the air over her food so that it fluttered its wings and hopped backwards again. Following, she shooed it away, finally watching as it swooped down below on open wings and disappeared out of sight.

Alone again, she silently cursed the distraction the bird had caused her, picking up her binoculars and practically ramming them over her eyes. Still no movement. Still an uneventful stakeout. Still half a year MIA tomorrow. As a precaution against further disturbances, she blindly opened the sliding door, placed the plate just beyond it, and closed it again.

A flapping of wings caught her attention, and she lifted the binoculars away from her face to see the bird alight onto the barrel of the half-assembled sniper rifle set up a foot to her left. The bird flapped its wings once more and adjusted its footing, black-and-blue plumage glinting in the sun. It looked somewhat like a blue jay. A blue jay that was currently sitting on—and pecking at—a few thousand dollars worth of S.H.I.E.L.D. equipment.

“Scram!” Natasha hissed, waving her hands at the offending creature. “Get off!” It stopped pecking at the metal and looked at her curiously. Then it hopped closer.

Natasha stared at the bird, seemingly immune to her hand-waving and growled words. She was starting to suspect it was no…ordinary blue jay. What reason did it have to come back after the food was gone? Blue jays—to her knowledge—were not normally interested in high-tech assassination equipment. Standing up and going inside, she located her Widow’s Bite cuffs on the table and slipped the left bracelet on, feeling the black elastic strap fit snugly over her skin, separating the golden bullet-casing-shaped pieces from touching her directly. She powered the device up, dialing it down to five percent of normal power—barely a shock for a human, and hopefully stun not kill for a bird. Then Natasha stepped back onto her stakeout balcony. The bird was still there, pecking at the screw fastening the sniper rifle to its stand. She aimed her wrist and shot.

Blue electricity arced out from the device, zapping the blue jay so quickly that it had no time to react. It simply toppled off the top of her rifle in a poof of feathers. She caught it deftly in her palm, running her fingers over its legs, feet, and beak, and then under each wing. It was clean.

Natasha frowned, setting the groggy bird down on the jacket holding her binoculars. Ignoring the immobile bird, she checked the house across the street again to no avail. Then she set it on the railing, holding it steady until its wobbly legs would sustain its weight. After a few more seconds, she launched it into the air again, shading her eyes from the sun after the let-go to watch the blue jay arc, begin to fall, and then seem to remember the use of its wings to soar again.

The stupid thing soared right back to the top of her sniper rifle.

Narrowing her eyes, Natasha checked the building again and then stared at the bird angrily. “Get. Off,” she repeated in her most dangerous voice. It began pecking at the screw again. A new idea occurred to her. She pursed her lips. For once she was glad Clint wasn’t here. The Black Widow stiffened, trying to force the word out. He would never let her hear the end of it. She bit her tongue: “Meow.” The bird merely tilted its head at her.

Natasha was out of ideas.

“Stupid bird,” she muttered, opening up the sliding door and taking out her sandwich again. She broke off a bit of the bread and threw it in the corner. The bird hopped after it with a spread of its wings. She picked up her binoculars again, scanning the doors, windows, and gate. The maid was done in the upstairs bedroom and had moved on to dusting the parlor below. She tossed another crumb to the bird and continued to watch. When she removed the binoculars from her face again, the bird was still in the—damn it, _its_ —corner. But the hole in her sandwich was now the size of her thumb.

“I’m trying to work here,” she said crossly, glaring at the offender. After a moment, Natasha pulled off an entire hunk of her sandwich—maybe it was more like half, but there was no way in hell she would admit that—and tossed it over. “Now stay over there and leave me alone, okay? I need to concentrate.” She turned away from the bird, settling back down with her binoculars. “It’s to save a…a friend.” Immediately she regretted the terminology—pedestrian, and barely scratching the surface of the years of history and trust between them. Loki may have been correct that her ledger was gushing red, but she was fairly certain it had a decent amount of Hawkeye purple mixed in as well, as much as he claimed it didn’t. The day they would be even was the same day her ledger was finally wiped clean. And that day was impossible. “A partner,” she amended quietly. “It’s for my partner.” 

A few seconds later, Natasha lowered the binoculars from her face to her lap. “I’m talking to a bird,” she stated. “That’s just…” She paused, staring out at the house she was surveilling. “…sad.” She shot an angry glance at the blue jay, then lifted the binoculars again. “You’re not even a hawk.” Natasha stopped, eyebrows furrowed, then slowly relaxed again. “…or a mockingbird.” The front door to the house opened and she sat up straighter, heartbeat quickening, hand reaching for her camera, but it was just the maid taking out the trash. After the woman went back inside, she glanced at the blue jay again.

“Why are all my friends birds?” she wondered aloud. “And I’m a spider. Birds eat spiders. Deadly spiders poison the birds.” She stopped again. “ _Focus, Romanoff_.” Natasha took a drink of water. She looked at the bird. “Although I guess I have a friend who’s a season. And one who’s a miniature mountain, deputy to the angry emotion. Am I the only one with a normal name?” A name the Red Room gave her, she remembered. Or at least, one they…westernized. Romanoff. What did her name even mean? Coulson had at least been ‘Son of Coul’ to the Asgardians, but she…

_A soft hand stroked her face. “It means we could be related to the last line of the tsars.”_

_“But what does that mean?”_

_A laugh came from somewhere in the background, genuine but guarded. “These days, very little, Natalia.”_

_Her mother’s smile. Warm. “But Natalia…that we picked out specially for you, Доченька. It means…”_

The memory faded. She didn’t remember what it meant.

She glanced sideways at the bird again, more unhappy than angry now. “Even when I’m alone Clint’s bird obsession haunts me. Just…go away.” The bird ignored her, and she sighed. “Yeah, I never could get him to go away either.” She looked out at the house, then down at her tablet. Seventeen hours to six months. “That’s how I got in this predicament in the first place.”


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha jumps through S.H.I.E.L.D. hoops.

_Natasha agreed to work with S.H.I.E.L.D._

_Fury agreed to let her try._

Past.

If there was a plus side to the Red Room, there had been no paperwork. Of course, she had had to do verbal—and sometimes physical—debriefs for her handlers, so perhaps a few reports and signatures was a good trade.

S.H.I.E.L.D. had a lot of paperwork.

“All right, that covers pay, medical coverage, and incidentals,” the woman said, removing another stack of papers. Agent Hill, as she had introduced herself, was a no-nonsense kind of agent from what Natasha could tell, although she appeared to share in the strange camaraderie with Barton that everyone except Rumlow she’d come across seemed to have. Her dark hair was pulled up into a tight bun and the eagle symbol proudly displayed on each arm of her uniform. “I don’t suppose you have an emergency contact?”

“That would be me,” Barton cut in quickly. “If that’s all right with you, Romanoff?” Her last name rolling off his tongue sounded strange after so many weeks of _Natasha_.

“Fine,” she assented, eager to be done. Hill’s office door was closed, but she could still hear the general thrum of the hallway outside, setting her nerves on edge. After so long with her world made up of only three faces, her brain was playing catchup with the overload of faces, names, and information from today.

“Here’s the next one, same deal: read and sign,” Hill said, setting another sheet in front of her.

_All monetary assets held by the undersigned are henceforth the property of S.H.I.E.L.D._ , Natasha read. “S.H.I.E.L.D.’s going to keep all my assets?”

“They’ll be liquidated and go to the Widows and Orphans fund,” Hill confirmed. “Or returned, if any of that money was stolen.”

Natasha frowned. “How much could that fund possibly need? My previous jobs paid…very well.”

“Thirty million, six hundred thousand and three dollars, if our analysts are correct,” Hill said. “The rest can go to a charity of your choice, if you prefer. But policy is you can’t keep any money earned illegally when you join S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“I didn’t have to sign away all my money when I joined,” Barton pointed out.

“Clint, you had twenty bucks.”

“Ah, so you let me keep it out of pity,” Barton nodded. “Appreciated, Maria.”

Natasha signed the document rather than put up a fight. S.H.I.E.L.D. paid its agents, as evidenced by the last set of paperwork, and even though that wouldn’t hold a candle to what she _had_ been making, she also wouldn’t have to pay for her own equipment anymore, or outfits, or properties.

As for a safety net…S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn’t located her web of safehouses yet, and she never intended to let them.

“All right, one final thing before I can issue your temporary badge,” Hill said, switching out the papers. “This is a special request from above: you sign to agree you can’t stab, maim, or otherwise injure Agent Brock Rumlow.”

“Why is _that_ in my contract?” Natasha asked, vaguely repulsed.

“Well, you did make quite a few death threats against him,” Barton pointed out fairly.

“Seven in his presence, twenty-six to other parties,” Hill informed her.

“You counted? Doesn’t S.H.I.E.L.D. have anything better to do?” Natasha asked, signing her name.

“As it happens, no. You’ve been the focus of most of our data-mining assets with high enough clearance since Barton brought you in.” Hill pulled the sheet back toward her, adding it to the file folder with Natasha’s name on it. She then pulled a black box out of her desk, withdrawing a silvery blue keycard with an extendable belt clip attached. The picture on it was not one Natasha recognized, but nevertheless it was fairly recent, in color, and she appeared to be looking at the camera. And her expression wasn’t particularly murderous. Beneath it, the words _Romanoff, Natasha_ were printed, along with _MUST BE ACCOMPANIED AT ALL TIMES_. “If Fury is satisfied with the report he gets from Dr. Garner, you’ll keep that,” Hill said. “It’ll get you into your quarters as well. Garner is expecting you in the psychiatric wing of medical, room 387.”

“Damn, I was hoping you’d get to eat first,” Barton said, pouting a little. “All you’ve had is that prepackaged stuff for weeks. It’s pizza day in the cafeteria. Pizza day is the best day, right, Hill?”

“If I say yes, will you go away?” the woman asked, but she didn’t look particularly annoyed.

“It’s fine,” Natasha told him. It was true—she did not really care what she ate, as long as it had the requisite calories and nutrients to keep her body in good working condition.

They left Hill uploading Natasha’s paperwork into her S.H.I.E.L.D. file, exiting what appeared to be an administration section of the building. “Don’t mind Hill, she’s just adjusting to life behind a desk,” Barton told her. “She was originally out of operations.”

“Was she injured in the field?”

“No, Fury plucked her out and stuck her there. Rumor is he’s grooming her for something…my guess is heading a new S.H.I.E.L.D. base somewhere. She has a knack for wrangling people to where they need to be.”

They took another elevator down to the medical level, this time bypassing the recovery ward Natasha had stayed in and heading into a section full of offices. For the first time she had seen in this facility, the walls changed from a sterile white to warm colors and patterns, and through another door there was light brown carpeting on the floor. “S.H.I.E.L.D.’s first step towards curing PTSD is fun-colored walls,” Barton joked, noticing her gaze. He seemed to know where he was going, taking the winding turns easily despite every one of them looking relatively the same.

A man stood outside the door to room 387. Natasha had seen him before, once, during her interrogation, when he chastised Morse and Rumlow for their unprofessional behavior in front of her. Like last time, he was dressed in a well-fitting suit and tie, with some aviator-style sunglasses tucked in one pocket.

“Phil Coulson,” Barton said by way of introductions. “He’s my handler, and…I’m yours now I guess? So you can call him your grand-handler.” He grinned at his own quip.

“I handle _both_ of you,” Coulson said, giving Natasha a long-suffering look. “Nice of you to tell me you were signing me up for this, by the way, Clint.”

“Natasha’ll be a piece of cake,” Barton said with a grin. “She’s a professional.”

His words didn’t seem to make Coulson feel any better, but he shook her hand. “It’s good to meet you, Miss Romanoff, in a non-interrogational setting.”

She nodded, reserving judgment on him. As a rule, handlers in the past had never quite meant good things for her, but on the other hand, Barton had claimed Coulson was different. And from what she could gather, anyone who could put up with Barton couldn’t have too short of a fuse. He was like no spy Natasha had ever met, and yet she had seen his skills firsthand.

“You can go on inside, I’ll just keep Clint company,” Coulson said. She pushed the door open, revealing a dark-skinned man in a comfortable-looking polo waiting for her, a tablet on his lap.

“Welcome,” he said, “Please, take a seat.” He waited for her to do so in the armchair opposite his, then asked, “I understand that you have many names. What would you like me to call you?”

“Depends on what we’re doing here,” Natasha told him.

“I’m Dr. Garner, or Andrew, whichever you prefer,” he said, crossing his legs and leaning back for a posture of relaxation. She wasn’t going to fall for it. “I’m here to get an assessment of your mental state,” he told her, “to see if you are fit for active duty within S.H.I.E.L.D., and to identify any potential triggers we need to be aware of.”

“I don’t have triggers, and I’m stable,” Natasha replied. “Is that all?”

Dr. Garner smiled graciously. “Not quite. My wife—she’s a lot like you. I’m not trying to say that her case is exactly like yours, or even claim that I know what you’re going through. I’ll be honest. I don’t. But my wife Melinda, she had a childhood a lot like yours.”

“What do you know about my childhood,” Natasha said, eyes narrowing.

He held up a placating hand. “She didn’t receive the sort of unconditional love from her parents that children are supposed to have. When she wanted their approval, she had to earn it. They wanted her to be good, and when she was good, they wanted her to be better. So she was better. But nothing was ever enough, and she ended up doing things trying to please them that were simply…not her. She lost herself in the process, and she didn’t find herself again until she came here, to work for S.H.I.E.L.D.” He paused, gaze attentive on her face but not penetrating. There was no malice in it. “I know this because I’ve read Agents Barton and Morse’s assessments of you. And the ones from medical, which indicate that you’re what, eighteen? Twenty? That’s very young to have your skillset, to be as good at it as you are.”

She gave no indication that he was right, but he didn’t seem to expect any.

“You asked why I am here. I won’t say ‘I’m here to help’ because I know that to someone who’s been through traumas like you have, that’s an empty statement—perhaps not even one you can comprehend. So I’ll be honest with you…Natasha?” he asked, trying it out. His open demeanor clearly left her free to reject it if she wished.

She didn’t.

“Natasha,” he nodded. “I’m here to evaluate whether we can let you have that same chance that Melinda did. Barton wants it for you. Morse is game. Fury is skeptical. Melinda is silent on the matter.” He paused, then smiled slightly. “Well, that’s kind of her thing. But the point is: I’m here to evaluate whether you want it yourself.”

The urge to snap that she didn’t want anything from him or from them was high, but she kept her mouth shut, imagining the look on Barton’s face when he next came in to tell her that she’s ruined her only chance of getting out of the cell with the exception of being taken out to a firing squad.

“I just want to get to know you a little,” Dr. Garner said. “Since we’re on the topic, why don’t we start with where you were raised. Was it in Russia?”

* * *

“How’d it go?” Barton asked when she came out. He was leaning up against the wall outside the door, and Coulson was gone.

Wrung-out, Natasha considered the various answers at her disposal, and decided on something close to honesty. “Horrible.”

Barton nodded sagely. “Mandatory psych evals always are.”

“Plus I didn’t know how much I could refuse to answer or just make up before risking getting kicked out of S.H.I.E.L.D., so…” Natasha added.

“About thirty percent.”

“I did about fifty.”

“Eh, you’ll be fine. Most of the stuff he was going to ask about we can’t verify anyway,” Barton shrugged. “So, what next? Lunch? Gym? What do freelance assassins do in their free time anyway?”

“Buy weapons. Look for the next job. Scrub security camera footage,” Natasha said.

“Sounds boring. Except maybe the weapons part. When Fury clears you, the first thing we’re going to do is head to the shooting range,” he said.

“How long do you think it’ll be?” Natasha asked, “before he clears me.”

“Clears? A day, by tonight maybe. Trusts? A hell of a lot longer, but that’s just the way he is.”

“He’s smart,” Natasha said. “Anyone who trusts me that easily would be exceedingly stupid.”

“Exceedingly stupid,” Barton mused. “I’ve been called stupid a lot of times, mostly by Fury and Coulson, but never _exceedingly_ before.” He looked vaguely proud of it.

“What?” Natasha said, glaring at him. “You don’t.”

“I do. I tr—”

“Don’t say it,” Natasha cut him off.

“Okay, I won’t,” Barton said.

She stared at him, angry and somewhat flabbergasted. “ _How_ are you a spy?”

“I prefer _agent_ , but spy works too, I guess. Assassin if you’re getting technical. And I have the traumatic backstory to go with.” He waggled his eyebrows at her, but she didn’t take the bait. After a few seconds of silence, he seemed to realize they were still lurking outside Andrew Garner the psychiatrist’s door, and gestured her off down the hallway. “So, what now, Romanoff?”

“Lunch?”

“Excellent idea,” Barton said happily, bounding forward, presumably in the direction of the cafeteria. “Have I mentioned how much I love pizza?”

* * *

By the time Natasha arrived at the several floors full of living quarters, darkness had taken over the various windows, painting the river—which she now knew was the Potomac in Washington, D.C.—a dull black that occasionally glittered with reflected stars. She was also pleasantly sore, every muscle feeling the burn of a good workout. Barton had offered to spar, but the other agents around unnerved her, though she would never admit it, and she declined. With just Barton…with just Barton it might be okay. If he was going to try to kill her he would have already—he would have just followed his orders to begin with and she would be in an unmarked grave somewhere already, if they even afforded her that much respect. But the other agents she had no desire to reveal the full extent of her skills in front of.

She had few enough cards left to play, and Natasha planned on keeping every single one of them as long as possible, working for S.H.I.E.L.D. or no.

Besides, the last time she had had someone to spar with…

“These are your quarters,” Barton announced, stopping by a door like looked much the same as all the others in the hallway. When she pressed her S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue keycard to it, the light on the scanner blinked green and she could hear the locking mechanism click apart. She pushed open the door.

The apartment was dark, until Barton flicked on the light. There was a two person couch to the left of the door, facing a TV mounted on the wall shared with the hallway outside. A small coffee table was nestled between them. Beyond that, the carpeting transitioned to a pleasant hardwood flooring for the small kitchen. It was outfitted with a metal sink, oven, stove, and microwave. A dish rack sat next to the sink on a granite countertop. Cupboards surrounded the microwave and extended out to the edge of the kitchen. A closed door, which Natasha supposed led to the bedroom, was set in the right wall near the flooring transition.

All in all, the apartment couldn’t have taken up more than four hundred square feet, but she could appreciate the efficient use of space.

“It’s already furnished with dishes and things too,” Barton said. “And I see a few of your personal effects have been returned.”

Natasha turned immediately to look and found he was right: the black catsuit she had worn for the Japan op was folded neatly on one couch cushion, and her boots were on the floor next to them. On the arm of the couch was a stack of dark gray cloth that Natasha didn’t recognize.

“We’ll get you outfitted with proper clothing tomorrow,” Barton said. “But there’s a fresh uniform that should fit you—no eagles on the shoulders, in case you were wondering.” Natasha hadn’t been, but now she wondered if that was because they didn’t want anyone to mistake her for a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, or whether he had been worried about scaring her off.

“Who has access?” Natasha asked, nodding toward the door. Her tactical assessment of the room had the large windows above the sink as potential points of entry as well, but no one on the outside hunting her would be likely to find her here and S.H.I.E.L.D. was much more likely to come in through the door than scale the building.

“Me, Coulson since he’s our handler, and Fury, since he’s the boss,” Barton told her. “It’s possible he added other people without telling me, but I don’t think so.” Some of what she was thinking must have shown on her face, because he quickly added, “There’s an old-fashioned lock on the bedroom and bathroom doors, so you’ll have your privacy. It locks from the inside and there’s no keyhole, so once it’s locked, the only way anyone gets through is with a battering ram.”

Natasha nodded, feeling marginally better. “Cameras?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. policy is no, but the keypad tracks who enters and leaves the room, even if they’re not the ones scanning in,” he replied. He checked his watch. “I’ll leave you to get settled in then,” Barton said. “I’ll be back around eight to take you down to breakfast?”

“I’ll be up,” she assented.

Barton headed for the door. “Night, Romanoff,” he said before letting it close behind him.

Letting out a deep breath, Natasha walked slowly around the apartment, feeling the cloth of the couch with the tips of her fingers and gazing out the window despite the blackness, acclimating herself with the unfamiliar space. She turned toward the bedroom, pushing downwards on the handle to let herself in. The room was dark and she fumbled for a second, fingers scrabbling against the wall in search of the switch. She found it, and light flooded the room.

Nick Fury looked up from where he was seated on her bed, and Natasha felt her insides freeze cold in a way that had nothing to do with Fury himself. Her heart pumped faster, a steady tingling sensation rising up her forearms. This is not that, Natasha told herself, still staring at Fury. This was not the Red Room.

Probably.

“Miss Romanoff,” Fury greeted her, standing up.

“Director Fury,” she replied, deciding that struck the right balance between professionalism to her soon-to-be-if-not-already superior and the part of her that still screamed to get out, run, and never look back.

“I received the results of your session with Dr. Garner, and your signed S.H.I.E.L.D. forms,” Fury told her. “So now it’s up to me to decide what to do with you.”

“I thought it was always up to you,” Natasha said.

“Well, now I have all the facts,” he replied. “Or, what you’re passing off as facts. I am _not_ an idiot.” He sighed. “But, what I also have is one of my best if unorthodox agents vouching for you. I also have a World Security Council on my ass about your disappearance since you entered our custody over a month ago. They want to use you as a weapon. Do you want to be used, Miss Romanoff?”

She stared at him, unsure of the correct answer. “It’s what I’m good for.”

“Now _that_ , I believe,” Fury said, squinting at her. “Hopefully not all you’re good for; Barton has higher hopes for you. But I am inclined to let you try, given how much it has already cost to find, catch, and secure you, and how much it will cost to continue to secure you. One more thing before I do, however…” He reached around the other side of the bed, bending down to pick something up. Though she did not move, Natasha’s body went into fight mode, readying herself for whatever he might pull out.

Fury shoved something long and furry in front of her face, holding it at arms length. “ _Mrow_ ,” the cat said, undisturbed by the manhandling. It had gray fur around the muzzle, but otherwise was a plain orange cat. Fury shook the cat a little, and the cat’s legs swung limply in his grasp. “Nothing?” He let the cat go onto the floor, where it sniffed curiously at Natasha’s legs. “All right, well, I guess that’s it then,” Fury said. “You can consider your defection request approved, for now.” He picked up the animal again, nestling it in one arm and tucking his trench coat so the cat was obscured from view, as if it had never existed at all. Then he headed out the bedroom door. “And Agent Romanoff,” he said, just outside it. He affixed her gaze with his. “I’ll have my eye on you.”


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha discovers she is being followed, and makes a catch herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so excited for you guys to read this one! Hope you enjoy :)

_Even after getting intel from Steve Rogers, Natasha’s searches in Berlin, Amsterdam, Malta, London, and Paris turned up nothing._

Present _.   
_Six Months Since Barton’s Kidnapping.

She was being followed. Watched. She hadn’t been sure before, but now she was. They weren’t very good at it, and that was what had made it hard to pin down. Like they couldn’t always follow, or keep up, so they didn’t appear everywhere she went.

But they were there.

Now it was time for Natasha to turn the hunter into the hunt _ed_.

She made herself visible, first. Walking down the street of her latest city, Bucharest, with no alterations to her appearance. Normal hair color, style, gait. She was even wearing mostly black, an overcoat that both helped with the winter weather and hid the myriad weapons she had at her disposal, both lethal and nonlethal. It didn’t take long for her shadow to appear again, this time in a baseball cap and sunglasses, from what she could tell from her casual peeks behind her. He was too far away to see much else, but she couldn’t shake the feeling he was familiar.

Once she was sure he was following, had a good view of her, and was at least three hundred feet behind, she ducked down a dingy side alley and hauled herself over the short fence blocking the bottom steps of a fire escape. She climbed a good two stories up, then crouched to wait.

The man came into the alley with caution, looking both ways and frowning, trying to ascertain where she had gone. The alley she had chosen was not long, so as to make him think she had just taken a shortcut to the next street over, and sure enough he began fast-walking towards the other end. His head remained on a constant swivel, and as he turned in her direction, she knew who it was that had been following her. She’d know that jawline anywhere.

Unworried about being seen by any passerby at just past dawn on a Saturday, she adjusted the settings on her Widow’s Bites and aimed her right wrist below. Natasha fired with a quick twist of her wrist, watching the arc of blue electricity hit him in the shoulder, taking him to the ground. She shimmied down the fire escape, shedding her coat for the more movable outfit underneath, then stood over him, arms crossed. “You’re not a spy, Rogers.”

“You’re a hard woman to tail,” he said, gingerly getting to his feet from a jolt that should have paralyzed a man twice his size.

“I hope you went back and paid that poor waitress,” Natasha said. “Wouldn’t want a news scandal about Captain America dining and dashing.”

“I did,” Rogers said, looking momentarily abashed. “Gave her twice the price of my drink in tip too. And, uh, signed her an autograph.”

Natasha cracked a half smile at that before letting her stone cold mask slip back into place. “I told you to stay home. That _I_ would find him.”

“And I told you that he’s my best friend, and I want to help,” he said.

“This isn’t work for a soldier; it’s work for a spy. You would only slow me down,” she said, firmly believing it to be true. If she also just simply didn’t want his company, that was immaterial. “And he’s not your friend—not anymore.”

“I don’t believe that. I can’t believe that.”

“Which is exactly why you’re going to stay out of my way, before you get yourself killed.” Something close to a scoff arose on his face, if Captain America was capable of something so arrogant. She adopted a fighting position. “You stay out of my way, or I will make you stay out of it.”

He looked down at her closed fists. “Romanoff…”

She rose up on one leg and kicked him, hard, straight in the chest, knocking him backward. “You choose.”

Rogers got to his feet, unhurt. “I don’t want to fight you.”

“Too bad.” Natasha spun at him, leveling another kick at his head, but he was ready for her this time, seizing her ankle and knocking her away. Her palms hit the ground, but it was better than her face, and she recovered her balance almost instantly, drawing into a crouch.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, putting his hands out placatingly.

_You won’t._ She sprang at him again, but modulated her strength so that instead of landing on him she dropped down in front of him, ducking between his legs and kicking them out from under him. Except, when her leg connected, his didn’t move, sending pain glancing up through her shin. Goddamn super soldiers.

Natasha ended up on the other side of him anyway and ducked the first swing he made at her easily. He made no attempt to hide where he would hit, a mistake the result of his standard army training and enhanced strength. Any blow he landed would be devastating.

The second swing came at her and she ducked underneath it, hooking her ankle around his in yet another attempt to unseat him. He stumbled slightly, and his other hand flew out to catch himself, catching her in the stomach. Though she rolled away from the blow, pain blossomed immediately where his palm had connected. It did not send her flying, and Natasha scrambled away, eyes narrowed. He was still trying not to hurt her.

His loss.

Natasha jumped back onto her feet, beginning to circle him. He followed her, rotating his body to match her movements, and she could see a hardness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. She leaped, and they exchanged a flurry of blows, none of which either of them managed to land. She saw his last one coming and twisted into it, letting her body go limp at the last second. His heel smashed into her side just below her ribs and she flew away from him, body smacking against the ground once, twice like a ragdoll.

She didn’t get up.

“Oh my God, Romanoff!” He was at her side immediately, hands reaching out to check her for injury. Natasha came back to life immediately, pulling his arms toward her and using his own momentum to catapult herself onto his back, legs wrapping around his neck. Her thighs squeezed together, cutting off blood flow. The element of surprise gave her an extra few seconds before he really began to struggle, trying to throw her off, but it only took thirteen before he was slumping to the ground. Unwilling to fall for the same trick he had, she kept her grip around him for another ten before releasing him, rolling away across the ground. Standing up and brushing herself off, she nudged his slack face with her boot, then uncapped one of the cylinders on her wrist. She angled it downward, and a retractable syringe of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best tranquilizer fell into her palm. Natasha jabbed it into his thigh for good measure, feeling it click and watching the little vial empty of the clear liquid. Then she picked up her coat and put it back on after beating some of the dust out of it, and lugged Captain America over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

Fucking hell, he was heavy.

Luckily, her safehouse was only three blocks away—she’d picked this alley for a reason, wandering around Bucharest until she was sure Rogers was tailing her before returning to this spot. It also had an elevator, but by the time she set him down—dropped him—in one of the metal kitchen chairs her muscles burned with exhaustion. The metal chair was high-backed, with thick bars well-suited to Natasha’s needs, and she looped every single bit of rope she had stashed in the hall closet around him. Wrists, ankles, thighs, chest, neck, elbows—it all got lashed to the chair. The rope was even nice stuff, nylon with metal weave that was almost impossible to cut with a straight-edged knife and still a bitch to get through with a serrated one. She had no doubts that he would get out of it eventually if he wasn’t continually sedated—and maybe even if he was—but keeping him here was less the point than sending a strong message. Besides, it really didn’t matter how many supplies she used on him. This safehouse, now compromised, had to be burned anyway.

After trussing him up like a turkey, Natasha shot him with another dose of tranquilizer—enough now to knock out a horse for a day, and then some—and gathered up her equipment, stuffing it in the trunk of the rental car outside. She had a few leads to follow, but she would be mobile now, or get a hotel if she needed it—no coming back to this place. A pang shot through her as she went to shut the door for good, and she dug a plastic water bottle out of one of the cupboards. Uncapping it, she stuck a long straw in it and wedged it securely between Rogers’s knees for when he woke up. She left a couple power bars in plain sight on the table as well, but stuffed all the knives in the knife block behind the drainpipe under the sink. What kind of Avenger would she be if she let a teammate starve, after all?

Natasha locked the door behind her and took the stairs down to her car. For about an hour she just sat in the driver’s seat, going over her notes and reviewing the list of other secure, or at least abandoned, places she had scoped out in years previous now that her safehouse was burned. Then she started the car and smoothly pulled away down the street.

* * *

Natasha sat perched on the rooftop of an apartment building overlooking a busy town square below, wondering if Rogers had woken up yet, and if so, if he’d managed to free himself from the bindings. There hadn’t been an angry phone call yet, so she doubted it. Still, it had been over twenty-four hours.

Below, the Sunday morning foot traffic was in full swing. Some sort of small festival was going on and throngs of people had showed up to participate, dots of color amongst bright white tents and awnings. It wasn’t the best part of town, but the neighborhood was obviously trying to revamp its image. A few farmers were selling the last of their summer produce and the bulk of their fall and winter items.

Natasha adjusted her high-powered binoculars, watching the goings-on in a careful grid pattern. Word with the street gangs is that a one-armed man had moved into the area about six months ago, someone who looked dangerous but was out of the life. She took that to mean they’d tried to recruit him, and he had refused. Most likely it was just an amputee with a rough past, but at this point, no lead was too small to check out.

She scanned over the crowd again, moving quadrant by quadrant. No guarantee that the Soldier would even come to an event like this, but it was easier than going door to door. Her binoculars stopped on one vendor’s stall, and Natasha felt the sharp bite of her teeth over her bottom lip. A man with dark hair that fell to his chin was standing there, buying some sort of fruit from the stall. A bright glare reflected off of something in his hand. A cellphone? No. _Metal fingers._

Natasha nearly bolted upright, left hand grasping at the roof’s railing. He was here. She had found him. She had enough wherewithal to wait long enough to see what direction the Soldier was headed after making his purchase before scrambling down from the roof, taking the stairs two at a time and bursting onto the street. She kept her head up and her eyes forward as she crossed on the crosswalk, moving fast enough to be a civilian in a moderate hurry but not enough to raise suspicion. She searched for him out of the corners of her vision, walking through the festival towards the direction he had gone. Her fingers twitched at her right wrist, dialing her Widow’s Bites up to eleven.

There he was, down two aisles through the _covrigi_ stand. The smell of warm soft pretzels engulfed her as she ducked through an empty section of the stand, hot on his tail. It was definitely him; she was close enough to recognize him now, from both his Smithsonian exhibit and Odessa and… _other_ places. She was ten feet away when he stiffened, sensing her, but her arm was already raised.

This was going to be messy. But he was right there, within her grasp, and Natasha couldn’t bring herself to care. The Widow’s Bites fired, bringing him to his knees. She fired again, aware of the sudden shrieks of the people around her but with eyes only for the Soldier, struggling on the ground. Nearby, someone was calling for the police in Romanian. She fired again, and the Solder stopped moving.

Natasha paused only long enough to jab his thigh with the same drug she’d knocked out Rogers with before hoisting him up over her shoulder and jogging out of the marketplace. Her path was clear of civilians, most of whom had run away or were hiding behind tents, but she could hear sirens approaching.

“Așteaptă … este un Răzbunător!” a man shouted, and she knew she had been recognized.

Her rental car was across the street and she threw the door to the backseat open with one hand, launching the Soldier inside of it. She shoved his feet in too, then closed the door and made for the driver’s seat. There was no time to bother with strapping in; she turned on the ignition and peeled away from the curb with a mixture of the sirens and the car’s own seatbelt alarm in her ears. Pressing the gas, she ran straight through the first light a second after it had turned red. She made three turns in quick succession, then slowed to a more moderate—meaning less hellish—pace and fumbled for her phone.

“Bobbi,” she said, placing it on the dash on speakerphone. “Do me a favor?” Her eyes automatically flicked back towards the super soldier sprawled across her backseat, making sure he was still unconscious. Logically she knew him waking up so soon after everything she’d just done to him was unlikely, but Natasha was taking no chances.

“This have anything to do with sudden chaos in a Romanian street market?” the agent asked dryly.

“Cleanup on aisle four, I guess,” Natasha replied. “Can you—”

“Already got two teams on it; they’re ten minutes out. We’ve also called the local police chief and explained that it’s S.H.I.E.L.D. business and they should let it go, might take a bit longer for word to reach the officers on the ground.”

“Thanks. One more thing—”

“There always is.”

“Can you get me a fully-fueled S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinjet on the nearest airfield, no attendants, no questions asked?”

“You caught him.” It wasn’t a question. When Natasha remained silent, Bobbi said, “Yes, there’ll be one at Henri Coandă International in fifteen.”

“Thank you. Don’t tell Fury,” Natasha said, ending the call. He would find out somehow—he always did—but at least Natasha might be able to get a few answers out of the Soldier before having to relinquish him to S.H.I.E.L.D. custody. Turning onto the highway, she pressed down the gas pedal and sped on toward the airfield.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you thought, and stay safe until next time!


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha and Clint receive her first S.H.I.E.L.D. mission.

_Natalia Alianovna Romanova became Natasha Romanoff, probationary agent of S.H.I.E.L.D._

Past.

True to his word, as soon as Barton found out she had been cleared by Fury, he brought her to the shooting range. She soon found that ‘shooting range’ was a bit of an inaccurate description for S.H.I.E.L.D.’s setup, two floors underground and large sections of it running the entire length of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters so that agents could practice their sniper skills. The door to the armory was unlocked only by keypad, and Natasha’s blinked red.

“Probationary,” Barton said, flashing her a quick smile. “Sorry.” He scanned his badge instead to let them in, and she scanned the rows of handguns before selecting one off the wall. Barton kicked the box in front of that section, and Natasha bent down to find it full of full magazines for the gun she had selected. He already had his bow but selected a similar handgun anyway, and they headed out to a secluded section of the range with mid-range targets. About a hundred yards away, human silhouettes with white-lined targets on the head and chest hung, ready to use.

Natasha pressed one of the mags she had taken into the slot at the bottom of her gun’s grip, then cocked it, caressing the cool metal, the power and potential at her fingertips. Barton, whose bow was already out, strung, and with an arrow resting in place, met her eyes. Then she turned away, facing the target, and pulled the trigger. _Bang_. She continued to walk forward as she fired one after another, marching all the way to the barrier that prevented anyone from walking out onto the range. Her face cracked a smile. When the clip was empty, she lowered the gun. All of her bullets had hit the center mass.

It felt good to hold a gun again, to point and fire and know that she was in control—that whatever she shot at would die, and cease to be a threat ever again.

Barton was still watching her, bow now slung over his back and chosen gun resting on the barrier in front of the next target over.

“Your bow is stupid,” Natasha told him, disliking the attention. His hands, which had begun reaching for the gun resting on the wooden block in front of him as soon as she was finished firing, abruptly reversed direction at her words, pulling the bow from where it clipped to his back and flicking it outwards once to string it immediately.

“How so?” Barton asked, holding his weapon of choice aloft.

“It’s slow,” Natasha informed him, hand darting out to jam another clip inside her gun in one fluid motion. She fired at the target without even blinking, then looked at him in triumph before realizing there was already an arrow sticking out of his.

“You were saying?” Barton grinned.

“It’s limited by the number of arrows you can carry.”

“Same with the bullets in your gun,” he pointed out. “And _I_ can reuse them if I run out.”

She fired at the target again and turned to face him, only managing to catch the slightest glimpse that there had once been an arrow in his upraised bow, already released. “It’s unwieldy in a hand-to-hand fight.”

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, now you’re just saying things you _know_ are not true.”

She couldn’t help a corner of her mouth lifting upwards as she remembered Japan. “I’ll give you that one,” Natasha conceded. “But what happens if the bow breaks? Or the string snaps?”

“What happens if your gun jams?” Barton fired back.

She gave him a look. “My guns don’t jam. I take good care of them.”

He laughed. “Everyone in this business has their guns jam at some point, no matter how clean and polished we keep them. Me: London, 1994; Oslow, 1997; Winnepeg, also 1997.” Barton shrugged. “1997 was not a good year for me.”

“Hm,” Natasha said, replacing the empty magazine in her gun with a full one. She turned away to fire again, putting round after round into the paper silhouette and taking heart in the fact that the weeks of imprisonment had not diminished her aim. “São Paulo, 1982,” she said, eyes still fixed on the target. Natasha felt a tap on her shoulder and she turned to face him, fingers wrapped tightly around her gun.

“Say again?” Barton said, but it didn’t sound like he was making fun of her. Her eyes flicked upward to the flesh-colored buds barely visible from where they peeked out of his inner ear.

“You’re deaf,” she said, remembering something about it mentioned during interrogation.

“Yep. And you’re hearing-abled.”

“And S.H.I.E.L.D. has use for an assassin that can’t hear?” Natasha asked, setting down her weapon.

“I have my aids, and I lip-read pretty damn well. I only turned ‘em off because the shooting sounds happen a bit too quick for my aids to tune out and it can damage the microphone. Coulson gets tetchy when he has to approve new ones too often.”

“ASL?” Natasha signed.

Barton nodded, gesturing something about talking quietly that she took to mean, “Silent communication is a bonus too.”

“I don’t know much,” she admitted carefully, returning to speaking out loud but making sure she was facing him head-on. “If we’re going to be working together, I should probably learn more. Does S.H.I.E.L.D. have any language materials or books covering it?”

“I can teach you,” he offered.

“I like books.”

“Books it is,” Barton said, still smiling at her inexplicably.

* * *

“You have a mission,” Coulson said, handing each of them a large dossier.

“What, you mean we’re not on this plane at four in the morning for a vacation?” Barton asked, but he flicked open the file. Natasha opened hers as well, finding a work-up on a balding, middle-aged man, his headshot, and a set of building blueprints all within the first three pages. Pierre Lefebvre, dealer of both exotic and traditional arms. Mid-level fish in the sea, and known to be selling a prototype of a rare, potent, and almost untraceable poison.

“Everything you need will be in that file,” Coulson said. “A very dangerous weapon is being handed off tonight at the Kissier Foundation Gala. S.H.I.E.L.D. needs you two to retrieve it, and get the buyer as well if you can. Alive.”

“Bag and tag,” Barton said. “Sounds fun. Good first mission. Right, Romanoff?”

“I can see why Fury chose it,” she shrugged. “Lots of media exposure and a large security presence at the event. Wouldn’t make it easy to murder you and give S.H.I.E.L.D. the slip.”

“Are you planning on murdering your partner, Miss Romanoff?” Coulson asked, not sounding particularly concerned about the possibility. “If so, I’m afraid I have to report it.”

She smiled a little too wide. “Of course not, sir.”

Their handler sighed, and Natasha felt some of the tingles in her body dissipate. “All right, well, we’ll be dropping you in about ten minutes. Clint, you know the location of the Prague safehouse. Formal wear has already been shipped there for your use.”

“And extraction?” Barton asked.

“One a.m. tonight at the same airfield,” Coulson answered. “If you miss it, go commercial.”

He made a face. “Economy Basic. We’ll be on time.”

“Good. Then the last thing is your codename for comms, Miss Romanoff. Protocol is that we don’t use real names over any channel when not on base.” He handed her a piece of paper with a list of names. “Here are the ones Fury suggested.”

“I’m partial to something like Hawkear myself,” Barton cut in eagerly. “Is that on there?” She shot him a look. “Hawkwoman? Nah, okay…” His eyes lit up. “For that move you pulled on us back in Tokyo—Hawkthighs.”

“I’ve had my identity ripped away from me too many times,” Natasha interrupted him, handing the list back to Coulson without even so much as glancing down at it. “Black Widow is the final one. It’s me. I can make it my own, not what the Red Room made it.”

“I thought you might say that,” Coulson nodded. “I’ll get Fury to sign off on it somehow.”

“You know you’ll still have to take on other names for covers,” Barton said.

“Of course. Covers are different,” she told him. “They don’t change who you are.”

Barton consulted the mission file again. “Well, tonight we’re Edmund and Idina Scheffield.” He looked at Coulson. “Seriously, who comes up with these names?”

“That’s classified,” Coulson said. “Are you ready to go?”

Both Clint and Natasha nodded, hefting their gear bags. Somewhere in hers, Natasha knew, was a handgun and an extra two magazines. Her fingers itched to strap it to her thigh again, to have that familiar weight and protection with her, but it would happen soon enough.

They exited the plane as soon as it landed on the small airfield east of the main parts of Prague, and then walked a few blocks in civilian clothing before Barton hailed a cab. He gave the driver an address then sat in the back with her. She could feel him watching her as she gazed placidly out the window until the car finally rolled to a stop.

“I assume that wasn’t the address of the safehouse?” she asked with one raised eyebrow once the cab had been paid and driven off into the night.

“It’s two blocks up,” Barton said, jerking his head in that general direction. She followed him to a nondescript townhouse in a row of other townhouses, which he unlocked with a key before gesturing her inside. The inside was furnished to look lived in, but Natasha’s trained eye could see the signs—the fake fruit in a bowl on the kitchen table, the faintly stained countertops so that the place didn’t look _too_ clean but also wouldn’t attract ants in the absence of human habitation. She immediately set about clearing the rest of the house, noting the locations of the windows and vents and other various points of entry. The house only had one bedroom, and had a mostly bare dresser, but the in closet was hanging a tux and three different dresses for her to choose from. Barton walked in afterward, but she refrained from asking him how S.H.I.E.L.D. had known her size.

He removed the tux from where it was hanging and retreated into the bathroom to change into it while she made a closer inspection of the three dresses. The first was sleeveless and a deep red, with a slit down one side that would make running easier despite the way it would cling to her legs. The second was a flowy lilac purple number with tasteful silver sequins along the shoulder straps. The third, and the one Natasha pulled out of the closet, was a dark green with gold accents. She held it up to herself and judged the length to be just long enough to cover a thigh holster without things getting weird.

“I vote for the purple one!” Barton called through the bathroom door. “Also, let me know when I can come back in.”

“Whenever,” Natasha said, clad in just her bra and panties as she unzipped the back of the green dress. Her heartrate picked up and began to hammer in her chest, but if Barton was going to try anything, she could take him and disappear into the wind better here than at a S.H.I.E.L.D. base, and it was better to know now.

She heard the door click open and purposefully didn’t look up. “Romanoff—!”

She shifted, tilting one hip to the side and casually laying aside the dress so that the whole of her was visible. “Problem?”

“No,” Barton said shortly, though the bob of his Adam’s apple betrayed him. He met her gaze steadily. “If you’re comfortable, I’m comfortable.”

Natasha’s posture relaxed minutely. “Good.” She gathered up the dress again and slipped it on, putting her right arm through the singular strap. “It’ll make playing husband and wife easier after all.”

“Yeah…sorry about that,” Barton said. “Are you good with…whatever we need to do?”

She affixed him with a firm, cool look. “It’s not my first mission, Barton. I can do whatever is necessary.”

“Defensive positioning, dilated pupils…could’ve fooled me,” he said casually. She immediately loosened her limbs and concentrated on returning her eyes to normal, hating him for it. Unable to let that slip in her comportment stand, she crossed the room to where he stood in two quick steps and pressed her mouth to his. He responded almost immediately, his lips moving by rote though his eyes remained open, calculating, confused.

“Just practicing,” she said as she stepped away.

“You don’t have to do that, you know,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what the expectations were in the Red Room, but I’m not like that. You’re uncomfortable with something, you tell me.”

She cocked her head. “I think it’s you who’s uncomfortable.”

“Because of the kiss? No. Familiar with that, thanks. But it still feels nonconsensual.”

“I initiated.”

He nodded, saying in a clipped tone, “Some part of you did.” He stepped toward her, bringing up his hands. “Want help with that zipper?”

She shrugged but turned to allow him access. Natasha felt the zipper sweep upwards from her lower back to somewhere between her shoulder blades, the brush of his fingers with it lingering no longer than he had to.

“You’re lucky,” she told him when he had finished, smoothing down the sides of her chosen dress and making sure everything fit right. “Not many men have kissed me half-dressed and lived.”

“That I believe,” Barton grunted. He flashed her a quick grin, signaling the return to the normal, unflappable Barton she had come to know. “But hey, the night’s still young.”

* * *

Their mark himself was easy enough to locate, sashaying around the dance floor with every woman who would have him and then stepping on their toes. She and Barton watched him from one of the dining tables above semi-empty plates. Barton had finished off nearly everything served, but Natasha was more selective, tasting everything for any trace of poison and avoiding the flavorful foods more able to mask it. She had perfected the art of swirling it around the plate to make more of it look eaten than had been, and given the state of many of the other women’s plates in the room, she blended in quite well. She did nibble on one of the delicate chocolates that had been placed out for dessert, keeping one eye on her mark while watching the exits and the other gala attendees with the other.

“We’re never going to get close to him if he doesn’t get off that dance floor,” Barton said next to her under his breath.

“We know anything else about the buyer?” Natasha asked. “Is it female?”

“We read the same dossier.”

She tipped back the rest of her glass of champagne, feeling the tickle of the bubbles sliding down her throat, then rose to her feet. “Then we’ll just have to get closer.” She held out her hand and was met with surprise. Natasha leaned in closer, cursing his possible ineptitude. “You _do_ know how to dance?”

“Of course, darling,” he said, standing smoothly and taking her hand. She allowed her ‘husband’ to lead her out onto the dance floor and then place one hand gently on her hip while she gripped his shoulder. They moved smoothly together, Natasha was relieved to find, and Barton had an amount of grace she found surprising for his profession, until she remembered what he’d said in interrogation regarding his background. His hand on her hip did not stray from its allowed position by even a centimeter.

They moved closer to the center of the room while continuing to dance, occasionally being waylaid by the need to dodge other dancing couples but making steady progress all the same. They halted and twirled in slow circles once they were about ten feet from the man and his current partner, Barton and Natasha alternately eyeing him over the other’s shoulder when they were facing the right way. He was talking—leering—at the second woman he danced with in the time they watched him, who was ten years his junior, and all in all he did not seem to be much on the lookout for anyone else, such as the weapon’s buyer.

“This isn’t working,” Natasha said as the third girl was exchanged for a fourth. “I’m going to go dance with him.”

Barton’s mouth worked for a second as if he was about to protest that they should stick together—more specifically, that he didn’t like the idea of Natasha going alone—but he closed it again with another glance at their mark. “He likes blondes,” Barton pointed out finally.

“I don’t think he likes your kind of blonde,” she deadpanned. Natasha gave him a false, highly predatory grin. “Besides, I’m every man’s type.”

Barton sighed, but didn’t argue further. They made their way back off the dance floor. “Have another flute of champagne,” he suggested, swiping one off a waiter’s tray and handing it to her. “Every girl he’s danced with has been holding one before he invited them.”

She flicked an eyebrow upward in acknowledgement and sipped at the liquid. “Charming.”

“And if we’re separating, turn your earpiece on.” Natasha acquiesced, tapping the flesh-colored bump in the recesses of her ear in a discreet motion masked by tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. There was a small beep to confirm it was on, and she turned back to the dance floor to watch their mark. She kicked Barton in the shin.

“Ow!”

“Leave,” she hissed. “He’s coming over here.”

Still limping, but she suspected just for show, Barton edged away and disappeared into the crowd. She sipped at the champagne once more and even snagged an hors d’oeuvres off a nearby table, pretending to be absorbed in watching the people dancing. She could see him out of her peripheral vision, scanning the ballroom. He approached, and she daintily finished off the last of her mushroom and parmesan palmier.

There was a tap on her shoulder, and she turned smoothly. “Excuse me,” her mark said. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. Pierre Lefebvre.”

“Idina Scheffield,” Natasha replied, smiling. “I’ve heard much about your work, Mr. Lefebvre. It seems like you paid for half this gala with your charitable contributions.”

“A bit more than half,” he said conspiratorially. “I’m old college friends with Brandon—Brandon Kissier—so I help out when I can. But please, call me Pierre.”

“Very admirable, Pierre,” Natasha said, taking another sip of champagne.

“What brings you here? I don’t think I’ve seen you at one of these before—I would have remembered a face like yours.”

“My husband does a lot of work with the Foundation in North America,” she said, waving a hand.

“Ah.” The man took a veritable step backward, looking almost disappointed.

“Would you like to dance?” Natasha asked. She leaned in, her lips close to Lefebvre’s ear. “I’m divorcing the cheating bastard within the month. He went off looking for the bathroom ten minutes ago, but something makes me think he got _distracted_ along the way.”

“I see. In that case…” he extended a hand. “It would be a shame to leave a beautiful thing like you without a partner.”

She accepted, allowing him to lead her out onto the ballroom floor. Once they reached an open spot, he turned toward her, settling his hands on her hip and side. They moved rhythmically through all the dance steps, his hand moving casually lower and lower, caressing her backside. Natasha concentrated on keeping her breathing steady even as her skin crawled and on not letting her feet get in the way of his or tripping over his clumsy steps. The next song was slower, so she moved closer to him, their bodies brushing as they rotated in slow circles.

“I’ve also heard from someone here,” Natasha breathed into his ear, “that you’re the man to go to if we’re looking for some materials outlawed by the Federal Assault Weapons ban in the States. Something untraceable.”

“Maybe,” Lefebvre smiled down at her indulgently. “Who’d you hear that from?”

“Oh, I think you know,” Natasha said coyly.

He returned her smile. “Yes, she never was that discreet.”

“Buyer is female, copy,” Barton said in her ear.

“We’re just good friends,” Natasha assured him.

“I imagine you would be, with husbands like yours,” Lefebvre said. “Ex-husband already, in her case.” Natasha wished she could instruct Clint to run a search on divorced women, preferably recently divorced, to find a name or at least narrow down the field, but there was no way to do that through her earpiece while in the middle of a conversation with their mark.

“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” Natasha asked, blinking.

“Your secret is safe with me,” Lefebvre whispered, squeezing her right butt cheek.

“Buyer is IDed as Lydia Matthews, age 29, blonde hair, blue eyes,” Barton said through the earpiece. “She’s the only female divorcee attending the gala tonight. I’ve got a photo too—I don’t think she and Lefebvre have met up yet, but a second set of eyes would be good.”

Natasha ducked her head and giggled, then cast her eyes out casually to the right towards the edge of the dance floor. She spotted Barton among the crowd and made eye contact, feigning a sudden onset of alarm. “My husband has spotted us,” Natasha said, stepping swiftly away from Lefebvre. His hands reluctantly left her. “I must keep up pretenses, I apologize—”

“Of course,” the man said smoothly.

“I’ll find you later,” Natasha promised, giving him a wink. Then she hurried off towards Barton, running her hands down the sides of her dress and fixing her hair, though she had done nothing with Lefebvre to muss them.

“He’s watching,” Barton said shortly as she reached him. His voice echoed in her ear from the earpiece, which she switched off again with one swipe of her hand toward her hair again.

“Look angry,” she replied.

His brows fixed together in a definite frown, and he grabbed her roughly by the arm, though her grip remained gentle. He lowered his mouth to hers—giving her plenty of time to pull away—and brought them into a searing, overly showy kiss. When he released her, it only took one glance back toward their mark to see that Barton’s message had been received perfectly.

“You good?” Barton asked.

“Yes,” Natasha said, resenting the question. “Show me the picture.” He held out his phone toward her, and she studied the face carefully. “You’re right, I don’t think I’ve seen her with him tonight.”

“Then we wait,” he nodded, taking the phone back and slipping it into the pocket in his tux. “There’s only an hour left of this thing anyway.” Barton tugged at his green bowtie, which matched the exact color of her dress. “This itches.”

She sent him a withering look without much heart in it and turned her attention back to the dance floor, watching Lefebvre twirl a new woman around the ballroom, a brunette this time. “You want to get out of here faster, you could scope out Lydia Matthews,” she suggested. “Turn her into an asset before we take her in.”

“Good idea, but I’ll have to get it approved by Coulson to reveal myself as government,” he said. “Anyone gets wind of an international agency mucking around and a lot of fingers are going to get pointed.”

Natasha pursed her lips but waited as he sent the secure text, feeling that her thigh holster had slipped downwards somewhere in the dancing and trying to maneuver it back upward without looking too awkward. It was the fault of the specialty guns S.H.I.E.L.D. had sent them in with—not an ounce of metal in them, so as to not to trigger the metal detectors at all the entrances. Some sort of proprietary polymer, which she supposed was easier than smuggling her regular weapons in the hard way, as she had done in these kinds of missions on her own.

Still, their weight was off.

“Coulson said no,” Barton announced after a minute or so. “Can’t risk it…sorry.”

“Is that her?” Natasha asked, gesturing. A new woman had interrupted Lefebvre’s dance with the brunette, who looked kind of put-out by how quickly Lefebvre was engaged with the newcomer. She was blonde, but from this distance Natasha couldn’t quite make the positive ID. She turned to Barton, holding out her arm in preparation for a return to dancing to get a better look.

“It’s her,” he said. She raised a questioning eyebrow at how he could possibly know that—her vision was perfect. Better than perfect, thanks to the machinations of the Red Room. “I see better from a distance.”

“Is that just a fancy way to say you’re far-sighted?” Natasha grumbled. The blonde moved away and off to the side of the dance floor, obviously waiting for Lefebvre to finish, while he resumed trampling the toes of the less-than-excited brunette.

“You want the package or the girl?” he asked, standing at her shoulder.

“Lefebvre.”

“He’s not our op.”

“Pity. The package. Before they make the trade.”

She wasn’t looking at him, but she imagined Barton rolled his eyes. “Fine. Go distract him from the woman about to pay him half a million dollars if you can.” Natasha nodded, heading in Lefebvre’s direction. Even as she approached, he was finishing up his dance, all eyes on the buyer who awaited him off to the side. Natasha adjusted her angle of approach to block his line of sight to the buyer—and to Barton, who he would surely recognize as her husband—and reached him with a breathy laugh.

“I finally got away,” she simpered, slurring her words a little. “Edmund had the nerve to invite one of his _extramarital conquests_ for a dance right in front of me, so I figured I would one-up him.” She raised an eyebrow, commanding all of his attention. “Bathroom? I don’t have much time, but it’ll be enough.”

“I—yes,” he said, swallowing hard and looking scarcely able to believe his good luck. Apparently nonconsensual gropes of random wealthy women was all he had been hoping to get tonight. “Excuse me,” he said to the one currently on his arm, who left in a huff with an expression that indicated she might like to spit in his face for good measure too. He reached over Natasha’s shoulder and held up five fingers to the buyer before quickly taking her hand and leading her away. They hadn’t even made it halfway through the hallway leading to the bathrooms before he was pressing her up against a wall, one hand curled possessively around her right breast.

His advances stirred nothing in her but a leaden sort of resentment, but she responded to them with the appropriate enthusiasm anyway, until she finally could pull back enough to herd him into the bathroom proper on the grounds of “But what if someone sees!” Once they were both inside the handicapped stall, she made quick work of bringing her knee up hard between his legs and he fell to the floor, sputtering and swearing. She grabbed his tie as material to tie him up with, but her hand came away with a cheap clip-on. She tossed it aside and set her right stiletto against his jugular instead, balancing steadily on the other foot as she lowered herself down to his level with the grace of a Bolshoi ballerina. She extracted a clear vial from his suit pocket and raised his eyebrow at him. “This it?”

“You…you…”

She dug her stiletto in a bit. “Is this the poison?”

He hissed in pain. “Yes! Yes!”

Natasha palmed it and stood up, removing the pointed heel from his throat. “Thanks,” she tossed behind her as she left, letting the stall door bang open and closed. Only once she was back in the ballroom did she realize she could not see Barton or Matthews anywhere, and that she had not turned on her comms again. She brought her hand to her ear. “Hawkeye, package secure. Your status?”

“Out back.”

She turned toward the emergency exit and made a beeline for it, pushing through the door despite its warnings that an alarm would sound. She knew from the S.H.I.E.L.D. file that it wasn’t hooked up to anything. Sure enough, Barton was waiting for her on the back steps, the woman sitting by his feet with duct tape over her mouth and wearing a set of S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue handcuffs thinner and flimsier than any Natasha had ever worn. Her hands were bound in the front, probably to make it less obvious as they walked the streets, and Barton pulled her up by them as Natasha approached.

She held up the vial.

“All right, let’s get out of here,” he said. He gave the woman a small push in the direction of their rental car parked a few blocks away, and in no time they were speeding off toward the airfield. There were no planes in their designated section when they arrived, though it was twelve-thirty according to Natasha’s phone. They waited in the car rather than the cold night air, Barton taking sips out of a water bottle with his feet on the dash and Natasha with her much-vaunted gun on her lap, pointed casually toward the back where their prisoner sat and her finger loosely wrapped around the trigger.

Twelve forty-five.

Twelve fifty.

Twelve fifty-five.

“He’ll be here,” Barton assured her as she looked at the time again. She did not contest it.

One a.m.

The roar of Quinjet engines was audible somewhere in the distance, but it was another couple minutes before it landed in front of them, the ramp descending. “Welcome back, Agent Barton, Miss Romanoff,” Coulson’s voice sounded in her ear, confirming his identity.

They exited the vehicle and pulled out Matthews, somehow ending up frog-marching her up the Quinjet’s ramp. Once they were inside, Coulson hit the button to pull the ramp back up and surveyed the three of them. “Any injuries?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Barton replied, sitting the woman down in one of the chairs lining both sides of the back of the jet and belting her in. He also popped two white knobs into her ears and activated them, where they emitted a faint blue light.

“All right, well done,” Coulson told them once the earbuds were in place. She presumed they were some kind of anti-listening measure. “Full debrief can wait until tomorrow morning; we’ll be dropping Miss Matthews off in the Zagreb base in about an hour and then be headed straight back to HQ.”

“Sounds good to me,” Barton said, pulling off his bowtie and flinging it toward the cockpit with a contented sigh. “You know you were two minutes late. Romanoff here was worried you weren’t gonna show.”

“Was not,” Natasha said, shooting him a glare.

“Sorry, Miss Romanoff,” Coulson said, although the twinkle in his eyes made it not seem quite sincere. “But congratulations on completing your first mission for S.H.I.E.L.D.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback always appreciated :)


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha takes her captive back to her apartment and brings in his old friend.

_After much searching, Natasha finally captured her target in Bucharest._

Present _._

She’d bagged two super soldiers in two days. That had to be a record.

Natasha glanced at the Quinjet’s flight controls, made a small adjustment to her heading, and then looked back at the prone form of the Winter Soldier, a.k.a. James Buchanan Barnes. She didn’t know which one he would be when he woke up, but she imagined with his training the response of the Soldier or Barnes to being electrocuted, drugged, and kidnapped would be about the same.

It was nighttime in New York City, the lights of which were visible in the bottom half of the windshield in front of her. She was flying low, above the tops of the buildings with all the exterior lights turned off so as to remain stealthy. In another couple minutes, she landed on the roof of her and Clint’s apartment building, one of the few in the city that she knew for a fact to have a roof sturdy enough to hold up a Quinjet. She set it down as gently as she could, hoping the residents wouldn’t notice anything.

After flipping the various switches to be ready for autopilot, she rose and attended to Barnes. The Soldier was cuffed, hands behind his back and feet together, and lying on his across four seats with the chains of the cuffs attached to the Quinjet’s side wall. Despite the dim lighting, she could see that his face was still slack, eyes closed. Nevertheless, she readied another syringe—her last until she made it back inside her apartment where there was a whole case of them under the bed—and held it in her hand as she approached.

Just as she was inches away from shooting the dose into his thigh, a metal hand shot out, grabbing her by the neck and squeezing. She flailed, choking, struggling to free herself. Her left hand flung around wildly until she felt the denim of his jeans and she thrust the syringe into him, felt it click as the tranquilizer automatically released into his bloodstream. It wasn’t going to be enough; the hand kept squeezing, her vision blackening on the edges before failing completely.

Natasha came to an unknown number of seconds later, staring groggily up at the Quinjet’s ceiling. She was lying on the floor of the Quinjet, twisted into an odd position, and the metal hand was slack at her throat. The top half of the Winter Soldier was passed out on top of her, his feet still shackled next to the seats above. As soon as she came to that realization, Natasha pushed him off of her, getting woozily to her feet. Her neck was tender when she touched it, but her airway clear and her voice functional when she tested it, which was good enough for now.

She pulled a flashlight from one of the cases of standard S.H.I.E.L.D. equipment stored above her head and peeled open one of his eyes, checking the responsiveness of his pupils. Then she set to work unbuckling him and lugged him down the stairwell towards her apartment. Shifting her grip on Barnes, she placed her fingers on the doorhandle of her apartment and waited for the S.H.I.E.L.D. tech to let her inside. Once it unlocked, she heaved the Soldier inside and closed and locked the door behind her. She hauled him to the bathroom and tugged him unceremoniously into the tub. Using the same cuffs as had held his legs before except closed more tightly, she affixed his hands to a metal grab bar at about waist height. It made her feel like an old woman to shower with a grab bar, but, well, this wasn’t the first time she’d had to tie someone up in her bathroom. Once he was semi-secure, she closed the ballistic, reinforced glass shower door behind her, because she’d learned that lesson the hard way too.

Two more shots of tranquilizer from the case under her bed and another pair of heavy-duty cuffs later, she was finally reasonably sure he was secure, as long as she kept the sedatives coming. She could wean him off it to get him talking, but not so much that he could break out. Probably.

Her apartment was just as she’d left it six months ago. A quarter-full jug of milk in the fridge—so very, very spoiled—and a box of exceedingly stale cereal in the cupboards. She munched on the cereal anyway but left the milk, as there was nothing left except emergency rations. She left briefly to set the Quinjet on autopilot back to the Hub, where the agents there would sense its approach and remote pilot it into one of the hangars so it didn’t squish anyone, but leaving for a grocery run was out of the question, despite the fact she hadn’t eaten anything in over twenty hours.

Well, maybe there was a way to get two birds with one stone. She sent a short text to Rogers, an address and one line: _Bring burgers._

* * *

Stark, with his ever-auspicious timing, called just as the buzzer sounded. She answered, because what if aliens were attacking again, and set the phone against her ear even as she walked toward the intercom. “Romanoff.”

“Hey Natashalie, how come there’s news on the net about Avengers action in Bucharest?” he asked. “I don’t remember getting a call.”

She sighed. “As stated in the press release, that was _S.H.I.E.L.D._ action. Goodbye, Stark.” Natasha ended the phone call, checked the security feed, and buzzed Rogers up. He appeared at her door about forty seconds later, promising looking paper bags in hand. The smell of fried things wafted in with him.

“I assume you didn’t just bring me here for the food,” he said as she took one.

“You made good time,” she said instead, unfolding the bag’s top and snagging a fry. She gestured him toward the table, and he sat down reluctantly. He was itching to just get up and search her place for the real reason he was here; she could see the hope and desperation in his eyes.

“I went back to the States once I managed to get untied,” he replied. “Thanks for that, by the way. But I figured I’d search our old haunts, in case he wasn’t in Europe.”

She nodded. “So this is the deal: he stays restrained and sedated. You don’t get too close.” She watched his eyes flick down to her neck, where a lurid ring of bruises was surely forming. “After he’s lucid and talking, the priority remains Barton—anything not relevant to that mission is secondary.”

“Of course Barton is the priority,” Rogers said, blue eyes sincere. “You said he’s…he’s missing?”

“Taken,” she said. “Off the balcony right next door, six months ago.”

He gaped at her. “Six—six months? Romanoff, why the heck didn’t you tell us?”

“Do you want to see him or not?” she asked.

Rogers swallowed and nodded, though the indignation did not quite fall away. “Yes. Yes, I would.”

Natasha stood from the table and Rogers did as well, following her to the bathroom. He knocked past her as soon as she had opened the door, and she let him.

“Buck?” Rogers pushed aside the glass shower door and knelt down in front of the tub so that he was at his level, trying to peer up into the shaggy mane of dark hair covering the Winter Soldier’s face.

“I’m not sure he’s awake yet,” Natasha said.

“Buck, is it really you?” The Winter Soldier’s head slowly lifted, revealing cold, brooding eyes in sunken sockets and a stiff set of his jaw. His eyes focused on Cap for a moment before a glazed expression took over that was more than just the sedatives. Natasha didn’t think Steve could see it. All he could see was his former friend. 

“Bucky, it’s okay. You’re safe here. And I’m so sorry for letting you fall off that cliff,” Steve told him. “Please, talk to me.”

The Winter Soldier gave a slight shake of his head, lips pressed firmly closed. Natasha watched the interaction carefully—the Soldier wasn’t struggling now, and she didn’t think it was the sedatives. Whether that recognition went anywhere beyond the most base instinctual level…

“You know me,” Rogers pressed. “We grew up together. You used to protect me from the bullies and tell girls to bring their friends when we went out—“

The man shook his head even more emphatically, letting his head drop down again and his hair cover his face. 

“Steve, are you sure he knows English?” Natasha asked gently. “I found him in Romania, and I knew him as a Russian asset. There’s no telling…”

“Of course you know English, Buck,” Rogers said without looking at her. He rocked back on his feet, still leaning forward so that he was as close as Natasha would have let him get. “Remember when we were in school I told you I was gonna take another language and you just laughed and said I was wasting my time? That if American English was good enough for James Buchanan Barnes, it was good enough for the rest of the world too…” He stopped. “And then I told you…I told you the other language I was talking about was art.” Rogers leaned closer, and Natasha’s insides tingled. Her eyes became more hawk-like, searching for any sign, any spasm of muscle, that indicated the Winter Soldier was about to make a move. “And you were the only one who didn’t make fun of me and tell me art wasn’t a language. Don’t you remember, Buck?” he whispered. 

“He may not,” Natasha said, perhaps a bit more harshly than she intended. “He was reconditioned. It’s possible…it’s possible he doesn’t even know who you are.” She placed a hand on Steve’s shoulder out of impulse. “Let me try.”

Cap nodded, standing up slowly and retreating a few awkward paces in the cramped space of the bathroom. His gaze was still fixed firmly on the Winter Soldier, searching for any hint of the man he once knew. 

“Soldat,” Natasha said in a commanding voice, standing above him. “Солдат, ты меня понимаешь?” Soldat, _do you understand?_

The Soldier’s voice was low and quiet. “I don’t want to respond to that anymore.”

Progress. A flicker of hope lit inside Natasha, and she looked back at Steve to see his eyes shining. “James,” she amended, crouching in front of him. “Do you know who he is?” She indicated Rogers.

“Muddled,” the Soldier said, head slipping low again.

“He might be going back under,” Natasha said softly for Cap’s benefit. She looked back at him. “He’ll be more lucid in another hour or two.”

“Natalia,” the Soldier mumbled, eyes closed. Then he was still again, the only movement the rise and fall of his chest.

“Natalia,” Rogers repeated in a bewildered sort of way. “That’s pretty close to… Does he know you? Why would he know you?”

Natasha stood up and placed a hand on Steve’s arm, leading him out of the bathroom. She shut the door behind them, then returned to the kitchen table, opening up her burger. “This is going to be a lot to take in,” she warned him.

“Well, it’s that kind of day,” he said, sitting down to some food himself. “I just…I can’t believe he’s here. I know you said he was alive and I’ve been desperate to find him, but until I saw him…I didn’t actually believe it.”

She took a bite. “Most of the intelligence community would share in your disbelief.”

“Does S.H.I.E.L.D. know he’s here?”

“Probably. But I haven’t told them. Fury trusts me enough to know I’ll do the right thing with him when I’m done.”

“So why did he call you Natalia?” Cap asked.

Natasha did not let her inner turmoil show, despite the twisting of her insides. This was information she’d mostly only shared with Clint, Coulson, and Fury, and to varying degrees. “A long time ago, I was trained to be an assassin in a place called the Red Room Academy, in Russia. At the Red Room, they start you very young. I know I wasn’t born there, but I don’t remember a life before.” He nodded, waiting for her to go on. The amount of soft openness in his face would have been useful in an interrogation, if she hadn’t been conditioned for years to be suspicious of such things—if she hadn’t been raised to hate the name Captain America. She was far enough removed from her training now to disregard such things, of course, but tidbits of conditioning had a way of surfacing when she least expected them.

“My memories of what happened there are very hazy. I’m sure I don’t remember most of it; they did a lot of partial wipes on the girls to keep us compliant and to keep us from retaining information they didn’t want us to have. I first remember the Winter Soldier being there when I was about fourteen.” She held Steve’s gaze over the yet uneaten half of her burger but did not see him, the dark room and the blue eyes clearer in her mind than ever. Madame B’s voice rang in her ears. _“He is here to help break you in, girls.”_

Natasha kept her voice perfectly steady. “He trained us in a specific skillset. I don’t think he was there the whole time though; I don’t have any memories of him near the time of my graduation.” She looked down, forced herself to mechanically take another bite, chew, swallow. “When he knew me, I was Natalia. That’s why he knows my name.”

“Thank you for telling me,” the man said gently, but she brushed off his pity, consuming a few more fries.

“Maybe it will help us reach him.”

“Should we go back?” Rogers asked. “That stuff you used to knock us out—it doesn’t last too long.”

“I know,” she said, standing from the table and moving to where her Widow’s Bites were plugged into the wall and charging. She slipped them on. “I’ll hold off on giving him more until the morning. If he tries to escape, get out of the way.”

“Don’t worry, I have no desire to experience those things again,” Steve said.

He entered the bathroom first once again, and Natasha followed behind him. “Buck,” he said, neither loud nor soft, and the Soldier’s eyes opened. If she wasn’t mistaken, the light behind them was a little less dim than before. “Do you know who I am?” Rogers asked, kneeling in front of him.

The Soldier shook his head, though his still-cuffed hands began to shake.

“I’m Steve. You’re Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, and we’re best friends. Please remember me,” Steve said.

“No. _Nyet_. I don’t know you.” The Soldier turned his head with considerable effort to stare at the ceiling. He spoke slowly, as if choosing every word with care before releasing it.

“Even when I had nothing, I had you,” Steve said softly, and Natasha found herself pulling him away.

She willed him to listen. “After I get the information about Barton, you can have as much time as you need.”

He nodded his agreement, sitting down on the floor with lines of misery written all over his face. She approached the Soldier instead, staying standing and waiting for his clouded blue eyes to focus on her.

“Natalia,” he said.

“James,” she replied.

“You escaped.”

“Yes,” she said carefully. “Many years ago. I work for S.H.I.E.L.D. now.” At the mention of S.H.I.E.L.D., his head twisted again, as if trying to get away from her words. “James, I need you to tell me what you know about Clint Barton.” She watched him for any sign of recognition, but he was staring to the side, away from her again. “He’s my partner, and he’s been missing for six months. Do you know him?”

The Soldier’s posture relaxed minutely, and he grunted, “Picture.” She took out her phone and pulled up the picture from his agent profile, then held it out to him. “I don’t know him.”

Her heart sank. Hopelessness, never far from the surface these days, rose within her. “Okay. How about her?” She turned the phone toward him again, this time with a picture of Diana Sokolova.

The Soldier froze. “No. _No_. No. No.” He began to bang his head against the tiled back wall of the shower, again and again, throwing his skull against it. Blood spattered the clean white tiles.

“Buck!” Rogers shouted, running forward. Natasha raised her arm and shot the Soldier with the Widow’s Bite, causing blue bolts of electricity to arc all over his body before he slumped forward, unconscious.


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha adjusts to her new life with S.H.I.E.L.D.

_Natasha’s first S.H.I.E.L.D. mission was a success._

Past.

Operations were different with S.H.I.E.L.D. than it had been with the Red Room, or with Ivan, or on her own. Killing people—that was the same. Getting shot at—also the same. But the rules were different. The intel was different. And Barton was…

Well, Natasha wasn’t quite sure what Barton was. Six ops together and he’d been utterly professional, all while being the most unprofessional assassin she’d ever had the—fortune?—to meet.

“I’m telling you, as soon as you’re off probationary status—which shouldn’t be long now—we can have R&D make you up some really _cool_ stuff,” Barton said. “Like my arrows. Explosive, grappling, fart…”

She looked at him doubtfully. “What was that last one?”

Barton grinned. “You heard me.”

Natasha shrugged. “I don’t know. I like my old stuff.” She patted the weapon belted at her side—just a handgun, but one that Coulson was finally allowing her to carry—loaded—around base. She suspected Barton had something to do with it.

“Well, yeah, but we can upgrade it…”

“Like this?” Natasha asked, letting the gun they were currently supposed to be testing dangle from her index finger. The entirety of it was plastic and ceramic, for getting through metal detectors.

“Yeah, it’s great, isn’t it?” Barton said. “No more dodging around the front entrances or making distractions so we can slip through—we can just waltz right in.”

She made a face. “The weight is off.”

“What? No, it isn’t,” Barton scoffed. “You shot perfectly fine.” He gestured at the paper silhouettes down the range. “All in the center of mass, all within a half dollar.”

She pulled the gun from her thigh holster, firing a single round at a target for the lane five over from hers before he’d even had time to react. It went straight through the bullseye cleanly despite the angle, burying itself in the wall.

Barton sighed. ”Okay, the weight is off. I’ll talk to R&D.”

Natasha smirked. “Thank you.”

* * *

“I risked my life, did everything you asked,” Natasha said, keeping her voice carefully monotone. This was just a mission report, nothing more. “With the lack of cover and the bullets spraying everywhere, it was a thirty percent chance of survival. I took that risk. For them.”

“And you couldn’t have done a thing more, Romanoff?” Fury asked. “Went in and got them, perhaps? Not nearly brought a building down on top of them?”

“The section in which they were trapped was more heavily fortified than the rest,” she replied evenly. “Brick and stone instead of nails and wood. Ninety-five percent chance of survival from the crash.”

“And after the crash? What then?” the director demanded, his one eye becoming ever more slit-like.

She frowned. “Nothing.”

“Nothing,” Fury repeated. “Would you like to say that again?” He leaned closer. “I thought I misheard you.”

“No. The building collapse bought them a minute. After that the risks outweighed the reward.”

“I see.”

Natasha’s brow furrowed and her back stiffened. Speaking slowly, she explained, “I bought them a minute. That minute could buy them another ten, and that ten could buy them an hour. Maybe that hour buys them a year, or five, or ten.”

Fury sighed, walking around his desk to stand at the rear of it. “Well, if you’re working for us now, I’m gonna need you to buy us more than a minute. I need you to buy each and every one of them a lifetime. Where we come from, there’s a saying—never leave a man behind. Do you know what that means, Romanoff?”

“In the Red Room, we also had a saying,” she cut back. “Не привязывайся. Do not get attached.”

“Well, that’s why we’re not the Red Room,” Fury responded harshly. “When at all possible, we care about our agents, and they are counting on us to get them to safety when things don’t go as planned. If you want us to give a damn about you, you’re gonna need to start acting like one of us.” He glared at her through his one good eye. “Do we understand each other?”

She glanced at Barton, who for once had a look of fear on his face. Her body reacted instinctively—he’d said S.H.I.E.L.D. was different, but if he was afraid in the face of the director’s anger—but, no, this wasn’t fear. It was concern. For her. For what the armed Black Widow would choose to do in this moment.

Natasha straightened, and looked Fury in the eye. “Yes, sir.”

The man in charge squinted, as if trying to detect the reason behind her sudden change in attitude. Finally, he waved a hand. “Both of you. Get out of my office.”

Barton came toward her then, hand moving to grip her forearm but thinking better of it. She led the way out, only allowing her anger to simmer to the surface once the door was well and truly closed behind them. “You still don’t get it, do you?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Natasha spat. She shot him a glare, striding off down the hallway towards the elevator that would take her to her quarters. “I don’t need a lecture from you too.”

“No lecture,” he said. “Wanna spar?”

She stopped short, and looked at him. Last time—when he’d brought her in—was unfinished business. Morse had interfered, two against one. And Natasha hadn’t been at her best that day.

“Fine,” she said, watching his surprise quickly morph into enthusiasm. “You’ll lose.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” he replied. They reached the elevator, and he pressed the button for the level with the large gym she had been inside a few times before. It was a short walk from where the elevator let out, but as before, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s amenities did not disappoint. Past the legion of treadmills and weight sets were the vast swathes of padded mats she had ignored the times before, too wary of the agents gawking at her to show off any of her _real_ skills.

Well, maybe this time they could _learn_ a thing or two, and save their own fucking skins instead of risking her life in some ill-begotten rescue mission.

Dropping their equipment on the side of one of the empty mats and stripping down to the bare essentials under their uniforms—a dark purple undershirt for him, and a black tank top for her—she and Barton squared off against each other. “Coulson’ll be mad if we break anything, so try to avoid that,” Barton said, beginning to circle. She copied his movements, watching him carefully.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. even has rules for sparring,” she said distastefully.

“I didn’t like the rules when I first joined either.” She attacked rather than responding, leading with a swift uppercut to the jaw that knocked him flat on his back. Natasha smiled before she felt his foot hook around her ankle as he went down, taking her with him. The mat smelled like sweat and some sort of strong disinfectant when it impacted her face.

Barton sprang to his feet and she did too, both of them resuming their circling, their breaths coming a little faster. “But he’s right about the rescue op.” He attacked first this time, a feint toward her abdomen with his elbow to cover for a backhand across the face. She saw it coming and took the blow, allowing the heat to blossom across her cheek in exchange for the chance to catch his wrist as he came out of it, pulling him forward with his own momentum and landing a kick to his exposed stomach while he was off-balance. He recovered quickly, blocking her next punch and attempting a series of blows of his own, none of which connected. When they broke apart, Natasha became aware of the small smattering of onlookers they had attracted, none of which were brave enough to approach the mat but were watching from their various workout stations. She felt Barton’s leg sweep hers out from under her.

Natasha landed on the floor, cursing her momentary distraction. “Sorry,” Barton said from above her, looking a bit confused. “Are you—” She launched herself at his kneecaps and he dropped too, both of them wrestling for control. She was on top, and then he was, pinning her with a complicated leg-lock with a flexibility she hadn’t known he had. “Okay, so I guess you’re fine,” Barton said. “I won’t fall for that again.”

She escaped his lock with difficulty, but ended up on her feet once more. “Don’t be so sure.”

“He’d send someone after you, you know. If you needed rescue.”

“So would have the Red Room. So I did not leak operational secrets.”

“No, because you have _value_. As a person.”

“As a weapon.”

Barton shrugged. “That too.” He caught her next punch in both of his hands, twisting her wrist when she tried to break free. Natasha kicked him in the chest with just enough force to knock his ass to the mat, assuming he would let her go rather than damage her hand.

“If we save them, they stay weak,” Natasha said, standing over him. “They don’t learn. And they get killed anyway the next time they come up against something they can’t handle.”

“Can’t learn if they’re dead,” Barton replied, pressing his palm to his chest and breathing deeply. “Ow. I’m out. But tomorrow, best two out of three.”

“Fine,” Natasha said, holding out her hand. Only when he looked at her strangely did she realize what she’d done automatically, some sort of leftover autopilot from sparring in the Room. There, if her opponent was still able to get up, it was one of the good days.

Barton grasped her hand and hauled himself to his feet. “I’m just saying—”

She didn’t meet his eyes. “I know what you’re saying.”

“Okay. Good. ‘Cause somehow a deadshot carnie and an ex-Russian assassin make the kind of team Fury likes to send on those impossible ops, especially when other lives are at stake.”

“…Deadshot carnie?”

He grinned. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

Natasha turned away, walking to the edge of the mat to toss him one of the gym towels hanging there. “Maybe tomorrow.”

* * *

Natasha was not called into Fury’s office again for the rest of the week, only dealing with a somewhat exasperated Agent Coulson. She and Barton were sent on two more missions—not rescue ops this time—which they completed with the same sort of ruthless efficiency that had been building up between them since the beginning, rescue op not included. Coulson assigned them their next one after two days of downtime, landing them in—

“Welcome to Podunk, Indiana,” Barton said proudly, spreading his arms. One went near Natasha’s face and the other out the window. She grabbed the wheel to stop them from hitting a large rock on the side of the road.

“That sign says ‘Arkadia,’” Natasha said, deadpan.

Barton returned his hands to wheel, looking slightly put-out.

“I know, I was just…’Podunk’ means—”

“I’m kidding, I know what it means,” Natasha told him. “I was fluent in English by the time I was six.”

“God, I hate it when you do that,” Barton said, but he was grinning. He pulled something black and rectangular out of his pocket. “Best part of being out on mission—unlimited S.H.I.E.L.D. credit card. I am going to take you to the nicest restaurant in this entire town. It’s right up the road.”

Natasha hesitated, then nodded. They both had to eat and there was plenty of time to do so before the mission became imperiled. She took the card from him, examining its metallic surface that revealed a familiar eagle at the right angle until she felt Clint pull into a parking spot. She looked up, then at Barton. “The best restaurant is an Olive Garden?”

“Hey, don’t underestimate the power of trash Italian food and unlimited tasteless breadsticks,” Barton said. “But yeah, this actually is the fanciest restaurant here.”

Natasha shrugged, opening the car door. “Unlimited breadsticks sound good to me.” 

They stuffed themselves on crappy Italian food, and Barton rubbed his stomach, groaning.

“Free soup refills or not, I don’t think you should have ordered that last one,” Natasha said. The waitress placed it in front of him, and Barton picked up the spoon with a determined look on his face.

“I find your lack of faith disturbing,” he said in a deep, strangled voice. She gave him a weird look, and his spoon clattered back into his bowl. “Oh my god.”

“What?” Natasha twisted in her seat to survey the mostly empty restaurant, checking each patron to ensure none of them had moved and both entrances for any sign they had been made.

“Ohmygodyouhaven’tseenStarWars,” Barton said. He lifted the bowl to his face and gulped down the soup straight from the bowl, then hailed the waitress for the check.

“What?” Natasha said again, thoroughly nonplussed. But Barton was too busy stuffing styrofoam containers full of their mostly-uneaten entrees, shoving them in a takeout bag and grabbing her wrist as soon as the waitress returned with the S.H.I.E.L.D. credit card.

“I’m about to change your life,” he said, dragging her out of the restaurant and back to their car, looking like the child on Christmas morning from that sappy holiday movie a mark had forced her to watch with him once. “You know, _again_.”

_“What are you talking about?”_ Natasha almost asked, but sighed and leaned back in the car seat instead, since there was really no point when Barton got like this. He pulled the car up in front of the hotel they were scheduled to stay at before continuing on their mini road trip to their actual destination tomorrow. They checked in, a fake ring on her third finger, and he wasted no time stuffing their leftovers unceremoniously into the mini fridge once they were inside their room.

He pulled a laptop out of his suitcase and balanced it on the foot of the bed. “Time for your education to begin.”

“Education?” Natasha asked, unable to help herself.

“ _Star Wars_ education,” he replied, as if that clarified things. “I can’t believe you’ve never seen it.”

“You mean those old sci-fi movies with the laser swords…?”

“They’re not old! They’re timeless,” Barton said, leaning forward to type. “Damn it, it’s on my other laptop…oh well, might as well just pirate it—we work for S.H.I.E.L.D., what does the _FBI_ think it’s gonna do to us…”

“…You want to show me a movie?”

“Not just any movie, the one that started it all—”

“In the middle of an op? Shouldn’t we be making sure we get enough sleep for tomorrow?” She was well past asking _why?_ , even if she still didn’t quite get it. _For fun_ , he’d tell her, as if that was supposed to mean something. Clint Barton did a lot of things ‘for fun’…and she supposed she hadn’t hated most of them.

“That’s what coffee is for,” he told her brightly.

“Barton…”

“Hey, just _one_ , okay?” He smiled, looking at her all puppy-dog eyes. “It’ll be fun, I promise.”

Natasha made a face. “Just one? How many are there?”

“Three of the originals, plus two more prequels—the third’s scheduled to come out next year,” he said happily. “People say the new ones are trash, but Bobbi and I still have a pact to get opening night tickets. So, please?”

“I guess,” Natasha shrugged.

“ _Yessss_.” He turned the laptop toward the head of the queen bed, then leaped off it to get the lights. Natasha reluctantly settled back against the headboard on her side, feeling the entire thing shake as he jumped back on. _A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Any and all feedback welcome. 
> 
> Also...the next chapter in this timeline (32) is Budapest. Just sayin'.


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha and Steve try to get through to the Winter Soldier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope everyone is healthy and staying safe!

_Natasha finally managed to hunt down and capture the Winter Soldier and chained him up in her bathroom. It’s more secure than it sounds._

Present _._

“What just happened?” Cap said, dropping to his knees beside her. Her fingers were on Bucky’s neck as soon as the electricity died away, pressing into his jugular to feel his pulse. It thrummed beneath her fingers, and she sat back, relieved.

“He’s not in any immediate medical danger, I don’t think,” she assured him. “I don’t know what happened.”

“He tried to hurt himself. Do you think—do you think he was trying to—”

“I don’t think he was trying to kill himself,” she said, shaking her head. “What’s more concerning to me is who was in control: Bucky or the Soldier?”

“So…so what, the Soldier knocked him out so he couldn’t reveal anything? Like a split personality?”

“We won’t know until he wakes up,” Natasha said, standing. “God damn it, we were so close!” Her fist connected with the bathroom wall, denting it.

“Whoa, Natasha!”

“I’m fine,” she said, staring down at her cracked, bloodied knuckles. “That was stupid, I’m fine.”

“Get some air,” he suggested, still eyeing her with unease. “I’ll watch him.” She considered spurning his offer, but air did sound good. Maybe the weight of her own hopes and inevitable disappointment would stop choking her out there.

She nodded to Cap, exiting the bathroom. Her fists were clenched at her sides despite the pain emanating from her right, and she snagged a handle of vodka out of the freezer on her way out.

The air outside was cold, frigid really, and cut straight through the thin jacket she was wearing. But she’d always been good at handling cold, growing up in Russia—a little New York winter wasn’t going to make her go back inside and put on a coat. She stared down at the lights of New York City below, hand grasping the icy railing. There were fewer of them than usual, given the time of night. Fewer of them than there had been last time she was out here, hearing words spoken in Russian that she’d never thought she’d hear again and realizing that Clint was missing. Would she have fought harder to stop the man from falling if she’d known just how long she’d have to search?

She released her death grip on the railing, backing up to fall against the wall next to the closed sliding glass door. She unscrewed the cap on the vodka and took a long swig, feeling her throat warm. The alcohol brought back memories of Russia, of being forced to drink it casually over a conversation lest she be punished with it poured down her throat, but it brought even more memories of good times—times with Clint, with Laura, and even with all the other people she could in a pinch consider friends. The alcohol reached her stomach, warming that as well, and she took deep, steadying breaths of the night air. Tears pricked at her eyes regardless; missing Clint was like missing a limb—the world kept turning, but nothing would ever be right.

On one hand, the Red Room had been right about the dangers of attachment, their cardinal sin.

On the other, she could feel like this the rest of her life and he would still have been worth it.

She wiped the few scant tears that had managed to fall away with her sleeve, then took another drink. Natasha waited until she was sure her eyes were their normal color before handing back inside, bottle swinging from one hand. She found Rogers standing outside the open bathroom door, still watching the Soldier, but he turned to her as she approached. “That going to help?” Cap asked, nodding at it.

“Won’t not help,” she said with a small shrug of her shoulders. “They started us on it young as they could without risking brain damage, and, well, it was Russia. Between that and whatever they pumped inside me during treatments, it would take a lot more than an eighth of a handle to get me drunk.”

“In that case, I could use some myself,” he said, holding out a hand. “Can’t get drunk anymore either.” She passed it to him without complaint, coming up beside him to look in on the Soldier. “He stirred a couple times. Might come around soon.”

“Rogers, I—”

“Call me Steve,” he said. “I’m not in the Army anymore.”

She gave him a small smile. “Steve. I want to apologize…for knocking you out. And not respecting your wishes about Barnes.”

“It’s all right,” he told her. “I know the feeling. Where Bucky’s concerned, it’s hard to feel like anything or anyone else matters. What we do for best friends, right?”

“Partners,” Natasha murmured, but she nodded.

* * *

“Don’t show me that again,” the Soldier groaned, shifting uncomfortably in his chained position as he slowly opened his eyes. “Don’t.”

“Here, Buck,” Steve said, holding out two ibuprofens and a glass of water with a straw in it. They were both close in front of him now, Natasha in a crouched position and Steve seated on the linoleum floor. “For your head.”

“Thanks,” the Soldier said, and Natasha wondered whether she should administer more of the sedative, if the Soldier was awake enough to be engaging in social niceties. More and more of him was coming alive behind the eyes with every hour that passed, and at some point very soon, he would become capable of being dangerous. Perhaps he already was.

Bucky, James, the Soldier—whoever he was obediently opened his mouth for Steve to drop the pills inside and then sucked down the water, draining the glass. “Why don’t you want me to show you the picture?” Natasha asked.

“Because I’m not that person anymore, and I don’t want to be,” Barnes answered. “I can feel it clouding my thoughts, making everything go foggy—until there’s only the Mission.”

“You don’t want to be the Winter Soldier anymore,” Steve said. “And—and before, when you hit your head on the wall, that wasn’t the Soldier knocking you out, that was you knocking yourself out?”

“I could feel it,” Barnes repeated.

“You have programming,” Natasha said. He nodded wearily. “Programming that might be triggered by anything related to your missions.”

“So, me,” Steve said, sitting back on his heels.

“I don’t know you,” Barnes said, as if trying to convince himself. “I don’t know you.”

“I still need to know where she is,” Natasha said. “My partner is missing and I need to find him. She took him.”

Barnes’s blue eyes flashed at her. “Do you know how long it took me, Natalia, to get their programming out of my head just enough so that I could function as a human again? To get to a place where one wrong move in public didn’t set off a murderous rampage? So it didn’t take over every time I felt threatened by a car door slamming or some random person on the street? How long it took me to escape from—from _them_ in the first place?”

“I understand,” Natasha said hotly. “You weren’t the only one programmed, James.”

“Okay, stop, both of you,” Steve cut in. “Buck, I am so sorry this happened to you. And of course Natasha doesn’t want you to go back to being the Soldier. But she does need your help, because the person…the person who helped her shed her programming is missing.”

“You can’t run away from it forever,” Natasha said softly, her anger somehow tempered by his words. “Cutting yourself off from the world—from someone who would unequivocally want to help you—isn’t a long term solution. Isn’t a life.”

“That’s what you found after the Room,” Barnes said, voice low and disbelieving. “A life?”

“Yes.” She swallowed. “There are people at S.H.I.E.L.D., scientists who can start to deprogram you. It’s a long process—life-long, really—and it doesn’t work completely, but it’s worked for others. Depending on what they did to you…”

“I can’t go to…to…that organization,” Barnes said. “It’ll come back. I’m barely keeping it controlled now.”

“More sedative?” Natasha asked, instantly on alert.

“In a few minutes,” Barnes said.

“I’ll go get it,” Natasha lied, getting to her feet. “Steve?” He caught her look and followed her out. She closed the door behind them, then went out to the balcony, where even super-soldier hearing wouldn’t be able to reach.

“You were serious about the deprogramming?” he asked as soon as they were out there.

“Well, I’ve only had it done in small doses, and only after the majority of the work was done. Barton and I did it the old-fashioned way when I joined; the treatment didn’t exist yet.”

“But it could help him.”

“I hope so. I can call S.H.I.E.L.D. and have them send a few people, no uniforms. We tell him they’re private contractors. Even if he doesn’t quite believe us, it should be enough to get around the programming.” The corners of her mouth lifted a little. “After all, he’s been convincing himself he doesn’t know you for the last few hours.”

“Do it,” Steve said.

“I need the information on the woman, Sokolova, first,” Natasha said.

“But—”

“The deprogramming takes a while. He’ll be in no fit state to talk for hours, days, maybe a week even. It has to be now.”

“It could trigger the Winter Soldier.” Steve crossed his arms, looking away from her, down at the city. “I just got him—part of him—back.”

Natasha stood on her tiptoes, briefly wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Then she slipped away back inside. “I’ll call them first.”

Her conversation with Fury ended up taking place out on the balcony as well, and was not as brief as she would have liked, as she had to convince him that the Soldier was indeed secure without a S.H.I.E.L.D. holding facility and that taking him to such a place would actually be decidedly _less_ secure. Soon enough, however, he agreed to scramble a team of doctors versed in the treatment to come to their aid, on the condition that Rogers be there as security. “I couldn’t make him leave if I tried,” Natasha told him. Fury seemed less than pleased with that statement, but informed her would take about twelve hours to get the necessary drugs and equipment anyway.

She rejoined Steve and Bucky in the bathroom when it was done. Neither of them looked happy, but at least Barnes wasn’t banging his head against the wall. “Called in a private team of scientists,” she told Barnes, allowing nothing in her facial expression to betray her lie. “But I need to know where the woman is.”

“Give us a minute,” Barnes requested, and Steve nodded and left. Natasha’s heart thrummed in her throat—this was the make or break moment.

“James,” Natasha entreated him once they were alone. “Please—”

“You were the only one who called me James,” he said, eyes staring a thousand yards away.

She blinked, shoving down her desperation. This was what he wanted to talk about? “You asked me to.”

“I did?” She nodded, letting him speak. “I think I hated it…what I did to you.” There was disgust and hopelessness intertwined in his voice, despite the dreamy quality of it as he swam through the haze of memories. “I hope I hated it.”

She paused, thinking carefully about her next words. “You were one of the better ones.”

He let out a ragged breath, leaning his head against the tiled wall and closing his eyes. “You should know her too, you know.”

“What?” Natasha asked, immediately on high alert again.

“You were there. You must have seen her.”

“There were a lot of girls there,” Natasha said, wracking her brain.

“I can’t say the name,” Barnes said, shaking his head. His eyes were bloodshot.

“Then just tell me a location,” Natasha said. “Please. I’ll find her myself.”

His body spasmed; he seemed to be fighting with himself. She raised her wrist defensively, Widow’s Bites charged and ready. “Surgut is nice this time of year,” he gasped. He shrank back into himself, panting, and Natasha felt the danger pass and lowered her arm.

“Thank you, James,” she said, placing her hand briefly on top of his flesh one. He made a tiny grunt of acknowledgement, and she pulled out another dose of the sedative, injecting it into his leg. Then she stood up, joining Steve outside.

“Did you get it?” he asked.

“Yeah. I have to go,” she said.

“I’ll stay.”

“Good. The team to deprogram him will be here in about eleven hours. I’m going to pack, and then get to their airport,” she said.

“Where are you going?”

“Russia. It always leads back to Russia,” she said, but no darkness clouded her voice. She felt buoyant for the first time in—well, she didn’t know exactly how long.

Natasha disappeared into her bedroom, then came back out with a taser. “Use this if something happens, it’ll work pretty much like my Bites.” She handed him three more doses of the sedative. “And one of these every six hours—should keep him lucid enough to talk, but give you a fighting chance if the Soldier conditioning takes over.”

“Oh, thanks,” Steve said sarcastically.

Her lips quirked upward, but she met his eyes in all seriousness. “You’ll be able to use that on him, right?”

He held up the taser. “Of course.”

“If he attacks, he’s not your best friend anymore. He’ll try to kill you.”

“I know. I’ll use it if I have to,” he said.

“Good. Don’t hesitate and then have to go all super-soldier brawl and wreck my apartment,” she warned, turning and heading back into her bedroom to begin packing.

“Eh, we’re all going to be living in Stark Tower soon anyway,” Rogers said, amusement clear in his voice.

“ _Don’t wreck my apartment_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any and all feedback appreciated! See you next time for a 10k-word foray into Budapest :D


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Budapest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I want to be watching _Black Widow _right now too. Hopefully this might cheer a few of you up though. Trigger warnings are at the bottom if needed.__

_With the help of Clint, Natasha has settled—somewhat—into her new life with S.H.I.E.L.D._

Past.  
Two Months After Joining S.H.I.E.L.D.

“I’m just saying, at least one didn’t have _racism_!” Barton said. “Are you telling me you’re down with racism?”

“Of course not,” Natasha scoffed. “But the writing and romance in two was _so bad_. You should know, you threw popcorn at the computer screen and got grease stuck in the keyboard!”

“But—”

“And the title,” she continued. “The clones didn’t even attack. _Attack of the Clones_ , Barton.”

He stopped, mouth open, the wheels in his brain visibly turning. “Wait, yes they did! At the end, they attacked the arena thing.”

Natasha thought about it. “That was more of a rescue than an attack…”

“Yeah, but they _attacked_ the droids during it, didn’t they?”

“Fine. But ‘I don’t like sand’ is still unforgivable.”

“You’re drawing the line at sand?” Barton asked. He mimicked Anakin’s voice, only doubly melodramatic. “What about ‘I’m haunted by the kiss you should never have given me’?”

“You’re right, that bit was worse,” Natasha agreed. “But you’re making my point for me.”

“ _Racism_ ,” Barton said again. “Jar Jar and the Neimoidians both.”

“Neimoidians?”

“The Trade Federation guys with the Asian accents.”

“Nerd.”

Barton stuck his tongue out at her. They both jolted forward in the backseat of the car as their driver slammed on the brakes. “Both of you,” Agent Coulson said from the driver’s seat, “get out of my car.”

“Aw, Phil,” Barton complained. “We aren’t even at the hotel yet. It’s still four blocks up!”

“ _Out_.”

Both master assassins slid out of the car, hefting their backpacks. “He doesn’t like _Star Wars_?” Natasha asked once they were on the sidewalk. “I thought it was a seminal piece of your culture.”

“Your culture too, soon—your citizenship papers are coming in,” he replied. “But no, he likes it. He just thinks he’s being funny.” He began walking in the same direction they had been traveling. “ _Unlike_ Phantom Menace.”

“Nope,” Natasha said, falling into step beside him. “Two was joyless. One had podraces, and double-sided lightsabers, and ‘Duel of the Fates.’” 

“Aha!” he crowed. “Who’s the nerd now, Romanoff?”

“Shut up,” she said, shoving her shoulder into his hard enough to make him stumble off the sidewalk. “Also…” She ducked her head. “By the way. I liked it better when you called me Natasha.”

Barton stopped, a grin splitting his face. “All right, _Nat_.”

“That is _not_ what I said.”

“Uh-huh, whatever you say, Nat.”

* * *

“Nat.” The word came to her vaguely. “Nat, stop kicking me. Nat. Natasha!” Hot weights strapped themselves to her wrists, then a weight fell over her whole body. Her eyes opened to see Clint on top of her, face inches from hers.

She thrust him off angrily. “Get off of me.”

“You were having a nightmare,” he told her, landing with a _whump_ on the other side of the bed.

“No shit, Sherlock,” she growled, running one hand through her hair to find it damp with sweat. Natasha threw herself back down on her side, facing away from him and glaring at the wall. She ignored the fact that her limbs were quivering.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Barton asked from behind her. There was a pause. “You know, I don’t normally let any women besides my wife kick me in bed, so…you might owe me one.”

Even in her muddled mind, that didn’t compute. “What wife?”

“Just checking your spy skills are still working,” he said lightly.

“Get out of the bed, Barton,” she said in a low voice, trying in vain to stop the shaking. She shoved her hands under the covers so he couldn’t see it.

He was quiet for a minute. Then: “Okay.” She felt the bed give slightly and then relax as he slipped out of it, heard his footsteps padding towards the door and out into the main room. Once he was gone, she curled up into the fetal position, hugging her knees to her chest.

She had never had this problem, this _weakness_ , in the Red Room. A few nightmares, yes—Ivan and later Madame B had tried to whip it out of her. But certainly not while she was working. Her fingernails dug into the flesh of her palms, indenting small crescent moons into her skin. _Mind over body, Natalia._ She pressed harder, and the pain became searing. She stopped herself just short of actual blood, remembering Barton’s reaction to the state of her hands the last time she had done this, and reluctantly let them fall to the side and fist in the blankets instead.

Natasha drew in a deep breath—more like a gulp of air—and concentrated on forcing her heart rate to calm. She would take back control. She had to.

Weaknesses were unacceptable for a Black Widow, after all.

* * *

Two weeks and she hadn’t solved the problem. Worse, she knew Clint knew, and was concerned. He didn’t say anything—she wouldn’t have allowed him to—but she could sense his attention, his disquiet, in a prickle at the back of her neck and a tingling in her calves.

“Sleep in, I’ll take first shower,” Clint said from beside her. Cold shame touched her insides but she did not contest it, knowing as well as he did how many hours had been spent sleepless and awake last night.She curled more onto her side as she heard the bathroom door close and the shower start running. It seemed like only a few seconds later before he was emerging, clad in boxers with a towel around his shoulders and bringing the heat of warm steam with him.

“‘Time is it?”

“Nearly nine.” She made a noise of discontentment. “I’ll meet Coulson, don’t worry about it.”

“I’m getting up,” she said obstinately, dragging herself into a sitting position and blinking in a futile attempt to get rid of the heaviness behind her eyes. “Stall him.”

“Will do.” Dressed, Clint walked outside the safehouse bedroom and shut the door behind him. Sighing, Natasha navigated her legs out of the muss of blankets and stood up with a stretch, holding a pose at the limits of her flexibility until she felt marginally more awake. Grabbing a bra and underwear, she crossed to the bathroom and shut herself inside before stripping and getting under the warm spray herself. Five minutes later, she emerged and dressed efficiently, choosing a shirt at random and pants that could conceal at least one blade per pant-leg and toweling off her hair. The low murmur of voices reached her ears from beyond the bedroom door—Coulson must have arrived for debrief. After checking her appearance in the mirror, she turned the bedroom door handle and stepped outside.

“I’m worried about her,” Clint said from the living room, and Natasha stopped cold.

“The nightmares?” Coulson asked.

“Getting worse,” he confirmed. “Or at least, not getting better. She won’t talk to me about them—I don’t know how bad they were before we got to her.”

“Is it affecting mission readiness?” _No_ , Natasha thought emphatically.

“She wouldn’t let that happen,” Clint said, and Natasha felt a small burst of pride slip through the sea of betrayal at his words. “But there are other things… Sometimes I think her training was more than just training.” Coulson said something she didn’t quite catch. “Not brainwashing exactly, although that may have been part of it. But conditioning. Her reactions, before she catches herself. Sometimes when she looks at me during a mission I can tell she’s not all there, or _Natasha_ is not all there, if that makes any sense…”

“It’s just the Widow.”

Barton let out a long sigh. “Yeah.”

“I have to ask… Are you concerned for your safety with her?”

“No,” Clint said, along with something else that eluded her hearing.

“All right, I’ll have S.H.I.E.L.D. look into any known conditioning practices. But I’m guessing she wouldn’t submit to treatment, even if we tried to get her into a lab.”

“Not likely,” he affirmed.

“Well, it’s only been two months,” Coulson said. “Do you remember what you were like at two months?”

“I was a little shit.”

“Yes, yes, you were. And still bucking S.H.I.E.L.D. protocols whenever you thought you could get away with it.”

“All right, all right, I see your point. I just wish she would let me help her, even if I don’t know how.”

There was silence for a few seconds. “Shower’s been off for a while,” Coulson said.

“I’ll go check,” Clint replied, and Natasha unfroze, ducking back into the bedroom and hurriedly shutting the door a little too hard with shaky hands. Barton let himself in a moment later. “Heard that, huh?”

She considered lying, but the sharp tang of betrayal was still strong on her tongue. “Yes.”

“You don’t have to eavesdrop, you know,” he told her. “I would have said all those things to your face if you asked.”

“So why didn’t you,” she challenged.

“I didn’t think you wanted to talk about it. And I want you to trust me.”

“Trust is stupid,” Natasha said, as if by rote. “And I don’t.”

“Well, if you ever do… I will tell you everything,” Clint promised. “It’s not my intention to keep secrets from you, Nat.”

“No, just to tell mine to other people,” she shot back.

“Coulson is our handler. There are some things he needs to know.” He raised an eyebrow. “And you like Coulson.”

She shifted. “That’s not the point.”

“Your secrets are your own, Natasha. If you share them with me, I will keep them, assuming no one else— _including you_ —gets hurt as a result. I will always have your back, whether you want me to or not—that’s what partners are for.”

Natasha huffed. “Fine.”

Clint looked at her. “Are we good?” She shrugged, giving a little half-nod. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

* * *

_CLASSFICATION: S.H.I.E.L.D. Level 7  
_ _ON ORDER OF: Fury, Nicholas J.   
_ _Pre-Mission Details for   
_ _OPERATION: REDACTED  
_ _DATE: REDACTED  
_ _FIELD AGENTS: REDACTED / Hawkeye, REDACTED / Black Widow  
_ _LOCATION: Budapest, Hungary_

“This is ridiculous,” Natasha said, waving the packet at him.

“Hm?” Clint lifted the binoculars from his face to look. “Hey, at least they gave us a location. There was one time Coulson stuck a bag over my head and put me on a plane… Well. More than one time.”

“Still ridiculous,” she grumbled, snagging the binoculars away from him. The building they were scouting was two blocks away, the home of a _REDACTED_ sex trafficking ring, for all the help that was. Get in, get out, capture the boss, who S.H.I.E.L.D. intel had visiting this particular one of his establishments tonight.

She held up the binoculars, careful not to get them too close lest they smudge the carefully applied makeup covering the dark circles around her eyes that seemed to be omnipresent these days—not that she thought the makeup was really fooling Clint, but he hadn’t brought it up and that was how she wanted things to stay. The sun was setting already, casting a fiery light across the Danube far off to Clint and Natasha’s left, barely visible through the rooftops. The city was one of the more beautiful that Natasha had been to, almost glowing golden in the fading light, but perhaps that was just because the shooting hadn’t started yet. Splattered with blood, everything always looked a little darker.

“Done with this?” she asked Clint, waving the briefing packet again.

“Yeah. Wasn’t long. And we’ve been here for hours.”

She _hmph_ ed her agreement and set to work burning the pages, small lighter in one hand and the sheets of paper held in the other, trusting the sunset to obscure the small amount of smoke. The edges curled and turned black before the fire began eating its way up the pages, what scant informational details there were turning to ash. When it was finally down to the small white part her fingers were holding, she dropped it to the cement rooftop and ground it under her boot, not wanting to start any urban fires. This wasn’t Chicago, after all. Natasha looked up to find Clint watching her.

“You like burning things, don’t you?”

“Shut up,” Natasha said, at first joking and then less so as memories of Ivan’s apartment and the girls within it came unbidden to her mind. She froze, jaw clenched, and only managed to untangle her knotted limbs once she realized Barton was looking at her, the crease of a frown on his brow. She forced her neck to bend, her eyes to focus on her phone screen, the numbers on it. “Time to go,” she said around the lump in her throat.

Barton made no argument, packing up their few things—water, snacks, binoculars, the tools of a good stakeout—with efficiency. Natasha checked the two guns between her long overcoat and hefted their ‘tourist’ backpack with all of their non-essentials in it. They headed down the stairwells together, Natasha in front and Clint in back, before beginning to meander across the streets to the building they had been spying on for most of the afternoon to ensure their target hadn’t left early. Night had mostly fallen by the time they arrived, Clint picking the lock on the building while she kept a lookout. The back entrance was unlit, and they both unholstered their weapons—a 9mil for Natasha onto which she screwed on a silencer and the retractable bow for Clint—but kept them low and stealthy. Further down the hallway, lights began dotting the ceiling, illuminating dilapidated paint and scuffed walls. After another locked door, the quality of their surroundings shot upward, and they knew they were getting close. Turning another corner burned into her mind by the hours of studying S.H.I.E.L.D.-provided blueprints, Clint and Natasha came to their desired door, a single guard standing in front of it.

“Got a meeting with Kovacs,” Natasha said to the guard. Before he had the chance to do much more than look confused, Clint had shot him in the chest with one purple-threaded arrow.

“Thought S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t have jurisdiction here yet?” Natasha asked in a quiet voice, even as she began to drag the body to the side. “Coulson wanted us to be discreet.”

“Tied up in negotiations. And this is me being discreet,” Clint said with a wink, pulling the arrow from the body and wiping it on the man’s jacket before returning it to his quiver.

Natasha rolled her eyes and took her position next to the door, just out of way of the frame. “Your turn.”

Clint thanked her with an overly showy bow and kicked it open, foot connecting just below the handle. Natasha moved in through the shower of wood splinters with her gun raised. The man behind the large desk stood up, wasting precious seconds with a shout of alarm before pulling an automatic weapon out from behind his chair. “Don’t,” Natasha advised him, moving swiftly to press the muzzle of her gun against his skull. Clint quickly cleared the interconnected rooms, bow aloft and arrow nocked, before aiming it directly at the man’s chest, nodding at Natasha. She slid the gun back into its holster, the silencer sliding through the custom-stitched hole on its underside, and unclipped a pair of cuffs from her belt. Once the man was restrained and gagged—despite the valiant attempt he made to bite her fingers—Clint led the way out of the room, Natasha following behind with their mark. Two more dead guards later, they were holed up in a S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse three blocks away, Kovacs tied hand-and-foot to a chair in the living room for their specialized “extradition” for his crimes to S.H.I.E.L.D.

Quick and easy. Natasha wasn’t complaining.

“Dinner?” Clint asked from in front of the stove, stirring a pot.

“Is that what you’re calling what you just made?” Natasha asked, but from the look he gave her he knew—rightly—that she was teasing.

“Mac and cheese is a perfectly good dinner,” he said, dividing it into two bowls.

“Carbs and fake cheese,” Natasha said, coming to the small dining table. She placed her gun down next to her bowl, casually facing their mark. She trusted her and Barton’s tying-people-up skills enough to be reasonably sure he wouldn’t escape, but you could never be _too_ certain. They both tucked in, not bothering to eat particularly quickly as they had another three hours before S.H.I.E.L.D. extract, otherwise known as Coulson arriving in an unmarked vehicle to confirm their catch and then a two and a half hour drive across the border into Slovakia to the Bratislava airport.

“Ahh, fake cheese,” Clint said. “My favorite. Feese!”

“You’re ridiculous,” Natasha told him, but she was smiling—right up until the first spray of bullets came through the door.

Natasha hit the floor immediately, right hand bringing the gun and left pulling Clint down with her, though he had reacted just as fast as she did. Bullets embedded themselves into the wall across from the highly perforated door, and Natasha shot back from under the table, hearing a body fall to the floor outside. The shots continued, a deafening cacophony from the extra large rounds their attackers had to be using to pierce the reinforced door.

“Bow,” Clint signed at her, and she saw the problem immediately, sticking out her leg to hook it with her ankle and drag it towards them from where it had been leaning against the wall, followed by the quiver. He flicked it to extend the weapon to its full length even as Natasha flipped the table they were crouched under, making a small amount of cover out of it even if it wouldn’t do much against the high caliber bullets. The door, not much more than splintered wood at this point, came crashing inwards, letting in a swarm of men in black tactical gear. The air exploded in another sea of bullets and dust, and Natasha laid down cover fire as Clint scrambled for the hallway to the safehouse’s bedroom. Using their alternate vantage points, they took turns taking down goons as they came through the door. Just as Natasha reached the last bullet in her magazine, the last of the men fell to the ground with an arrow sticking out of him, though she could hear more pounding their way up the stairs.

“We have to move,” Natasha said, stating the obvious.

“Kovacs?” Clint asked, and she looked behind her to see the man slumped in his chair, at least three bullet holes blossoming red across his chest and legs.

“Dead. Window?” she suggested. They both made a beeline for the bedroom, the only room with a window overlooking the street. A few more shots shredded the wallpaper right behind Natasha, and she sprang forward. A moment later the window was shoved open and the screen clattered onto the street below, Clint and then Natasha leaping down to join it.

The wind whistled through her hair barely long enough for her to register it before her feet impacted the concrete, sending jolts of pain through her ankles and knees even as she dropped into a roll to mitigate the damage. Then she and Clint were running along the street until Barton skidded to a stop and yelled, “Here!” next to an unremarkable black sedan.

“Keys,” Natasha demanded, catching them when he tossed them over. She practically threw herself into the driver’s seat, slamming the door closed behind her, and did not wait for him to be seat belted before she had jammed the key in the slot and was peeling out onto the street. Steering with her knee and pressing on the accelerator with her foot, she managed to replace the nearly empty mag with a full one from her belt, cursing the other handgun which was still sitting on the safehouse’s coffee table. She tossed the loaded gun to Clint in the passenger seat, who was twisted around to stare out the back with his bow held horizontally to fit it in the car. Natasha sped up and blew through a red light, then made a quick turn down a side street, car bouncing wildly over the potholes. The outwardly unremarkable S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicle had a deceptive number of horsepower under the hood. “Anyone following?”

“Give me a sec,” he said, an arrow nocked and ready. “I don’t see any—no, never mind. Two, make that three, SUVs, black, maybe two hundred feet behind and gaining. He retracted the bow again, attached it to his back in favor of Natasha’s gun and the one strapped to his thigh. “Can you lose them?”

“Shooting out their tires would be helpful,” Natasha said, bursting out of the side street and back onto the main road and pulling a hard left turn with a screech. The scent of burning rubber reached her nostrils. “Also, maybe hold on.” She sent them careening around another corner, trying to lose their pursuers. She cursed the layout of Budapest streets, all curves with few straightaways with which to build up speed. Bullets peppered their car and Natasha ducked, hearing Clint blast off shots next to her. She didn’t have time to look at what he was doing, too busy weaving in and out of nighttime traffic and trying not to hit any pedestrians while gunning the gas as fast as the moderately busy streets would allow. Two more shots made it through to the front, one blasting a hole straight through the CD player and the other grazing her hip, though she didn’t stop to assess the damage.

“Still gaining!” Clint told her. “Two of ‘em now, think I took out the tires of one of them.”

“Got it.” She allowed her speed to dip until the vehicles were right behind her, eying them in the rearview mirror. Grasping the clutch and working it with her right hand, Natasha waited until the last second to make the next right turn, whipping the wheel around with one hand and feeling the rear wheels break traction. She popped the clutch, then countersteered aggressively down the street, the back wheels making contact with the ground again. The car hurtled forward with no loss in momentum, but a look behind her had the SUVs popping the curb and only a precious few seconds behind. Working the clutch again, Natasha cut across a few lanes to merge in with the steady stream of cars coming off the M0, weaving in and out of traffic and almost being taken out by a tram, ignoring the blaring horns and angry shouts of the drivers. From the shots Clint was still peppering off, she hadn’t lost them.

“Civilians are gonna get caught in the crossfire,” Barton warned, and she couldn’t help but take his point. A light turned red up ahead with a long line of cars between it and them, and she wrenched the wheel to the side, car bouncing up and over the center divide and drifting into a mid-street u-turn that almost caused them to spin out entirely. Once she was back in control, Natasha gunned it again, dodging other cars in the exact opposite direction of their pursuers. “Crazy Ivan! Nice,” Clint crowed, and she spared one glance to her right to give him a confused, and a little offended, look. “There’s another TV show I need to show you, never mind that now,” he told her.

“ _Amerikanets_ ,” she muttered, pressing the gas.

“God damn it, they’re on us again. Who _are_ these guys,” Clint swore. Ignoring a stop sign, she yanked the wheel to the left and pulled the handbrake, sliding around the corner onto a one-way street. Headlights came at her with more blaring horns and she jerked aside to avoid them, leaving a pile-up behind her in their dust. The car lunged forward once again as she shifted gears and slammed on the gas, hurtling along a 50km/h road at 85. In less than a minute, the SUVs swept up again from behind, gaining on them slowly but surely. Shots exploded the left-hand passenger window and Natasha swore, swerving wildly as the third SUV rejoined the chase from the side. _Click_. “I’m out,” Clint said. “Should be more under the back seat.”

“Do it,” Natasha said, pulling into the least occupied lane. He unbuckled, shoving himself through the space between their seats and into the back, feet moving like a windmill until he’d tumbled through. In the rearview mirror, she could see him tug the dummy seat upwards to reveal the small weapons cache beneath, lifting out a semiautomatic and resuming shooting over the backseat. They were in some sort of industrial neighborhood now, flat Soviet-era buildings replacing the older city center’s architecture. She shot down another smaller street, taking left and right turns nearly at random, just trying to lose them. Natasha yanked the wheel around for another hairpin turn, and Clint hissed, trying to remain upright even as he was tossed around.

_Bang!_

The car shook and then skidded in circles, throwing Natasha against the side door and completely upending Clint in the back. The car slammed to a stop as its front hit a light pole, crushing the hood and sending a shower of sparks overhead as the cords of the pole ripped apart. The white airbag exploded to life in front of her, preventing her skull from impacting the steering wheel, and Natasha had just enough wherewithal to turn to see Clint miraculously unharmed in the collision despite the lack of seatbelt or airbag.

Then the street light pole crashed down on top of him.

Natasha unbelted immediately, fingers scrabbling at the release mechanism amid the blood rushing through her ears. She threw open her car door wide, yanking the back one by the handle and diving toward the backseat where Clint lay, unmoving. The roof of the car was cracked and bowed, obviously having taken the brunt of the blow, but blood flowed thickly from a large dark patch on his head, just above his ear. Hooking her arm under his, Natasha hauled his body out of the car, dragging him away from the crash with her head up and alert for the SUVs’ reappearance. They screamed around the corner before she and Clint had made it twenty yards toward the nearest building, only to watch the car explode in a ball of fire.

The force of the explosion was like a shove from behind, causing Natasha to lose her balance momentarily, but she picked herself up again and hefted Clint over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Moving as fast as she could, she made for the second nearest of the abandoned industrial buildings, briefly setting Clint down to kick a door in and barricade it with some heavy machinery from behind. Then it was down into the building’s sub-levels where the air was cold and stale and smelled of mildew and rotting things. But it had a breaker somehow still wired to electricity and working lightbulbs, a couple heavy crates with which to barricade the door, and Clint’s slack face was getting paler by the minute, so Natasha took it. With the lights working and the room relatively secure, Natasha returned to where he lay on the floor, pressing her fingers against his neck to feel his pulse. Fast and weak, but steady. She began to examine the head injury, but even more blood seemed to be leaking from his side, beginning a small pool on the floor. Unzipping his tac vest, Natasha swore, immediately pressing her hands over the bullet hole she found there in an attempt to stem the bleeding.

“Ow,” he murmured, and a surge of relief swept through her.

“You’re awake,” she said. “I need to stop the bleeding.”

“That would be nice,” he gasped out. She pulled a knife from her boot and unzipped her own vest, cutting a sizable strip of fabric from her undershirt. Balling it up, Natasha pressed it into the wound, gritting her teeth at Clint’s hiss of pain. Planting one hand on his hip and one hand six inches above the bullet hole, she turned him over just enough for her to see underneath and check for an exit wound. None.

“This is going to hurt,” she warned, setting him back down again.

Clint’s breath came in short pants. “All right, well, I may pass out again—save myself the trouble—”

“Do _not_ pass out,” Natasha said, refraining from slapping him in the face in his condition and settling for a swift flick to the nose. “You suffered a bad head injury and your pupils are blown. Stay _awake_.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Clint managed, white as a sheet. He lifted his head slightly, barely an inch, and saw her knife. “Got any alcohol to sterilize that with?”

“Nope,” Natasha said, holding up her lighter.

“You’ve got…to be kidding me.” She flicked it open and activated the flame, holding the knife blade directly in it.

“Better than nothing.” Natasha waited as long as she dared given his current status of bleeding out in front of her, then removed the knife from the flame, allowing it to cool for a few seconds before removing the cloth from his wound. She pressed the knife blade into it, trying not to cut any more of his flesh but needing to get underneath the bullet wherever it had buried itself in order to pry it out. Clint stiffened immediately as she pressed inward but did not thrash around, every muscle locked with the effort of remaining still, his breathing harsh and ragged. Luckily, it didn’t take much to find it, as the large round had penetrated his vest but been slowed enough to only make it about an inch or so into his side. Rooting her knife around the bullet, she slowly moved it upward until the metal ball emerged. Natasha immediately restuffed the wound with the cloth from her shirt, wiping the blood off the knife on her pant-leg before holding the flame up to the blade again.

This time, she waited until it was red-hot before closing the lighter and removing the cloth once again. “Sorry,” she said, just before pressing the blade to his skin over the wound. Only a small whimper was allowed out of his mouth, though she could see the tears leak out of his eyes. The stench of burning flesh hit her like a freight train and Natasha clamped her mouth closed and forced herself not to gag.

_The children’s ward, little bodies in little nightgowns, the slish-slosh of gasoline canisters, the heat of the fire—“Well done, Natalia."_

_And then the screams._

Natasha bit her lip, hard, forcing the memory down and away from her conscious mind. She lifted the knife from Barton’s flesh, dropping it next to the two of them with shaking hands, then shifted up towards his face. “Clint. Clint!” His eyes fluttered open, a hazy blue. She swallowed. “I thought we agreed, no falling asleep?”

“Sorry,” he rasped. “I just…the burning…” Natasha nodded, knowing from experience with the kind of pain he was dealing with plus the blood loss he probably wasn’t able to help it. In fact, his just being conscious right now was impressive. “…reminded me of my dad and what he used to do to me with cigarette butts when I was a kid.” She stared down at him. “Don’t worry about it,” Clint told her. Natasha mentally shook herself, then checked his head with light fingers and a deft touch. An actual doctor would probably prescribe stitches, but as it was, the exterior damage was decidedly less life-threatening than the bullet wound.

“Double vision?” she asked, peering into his eyes.

“No. Hurts like a sonofabitch though,” Clint said through labored breaths.

“Year?”

“2004.”

“Alias.”

“Hawkeye.”

“Real full name.”

“Clinton Francis Barton. Don’t…don’t tease me about the middle name.”

“No promises,” Natasha said, a hint of a smile touching her lips. “Location?”

“Uh…” Clint screwed up his face. “Not to alarm you, but drawing a blank.”

“Budapest,” Natasha told him. “Bad guys are men in professional tac gear who could come bursting in here at any moment, so keep an eye out.”

“Got it. I think.”

“You definitely have a concussion,” she said.

“That’s too bad; I was really…” He struggled for breath. “…really looking forward to a nap.”

She flicked his nose again, jolting him back to full wakefulness with the sudden and unexpected gesture. “No naps.”

He sort of sighed, jaw clenched together with pain and the effort of remaining conscious. “Coulson?” he asked once he had regained some mastery of himself. She pulled out her phone, only to find the streak of a bullet that went straight through the screen and into the electronics underneath and a small gash on her hip from where it had probably saved her from much worse injury.

“Where’s yours?” she asked him.

“Next to the stove at the safehouse,” he grimaced. Clint caught her expression. “He’ll come for us, when we don’t check in. Or if he’s watching the local news.” He found her hand and squeezed it. “Any idea who they are? The bad guys.”

Natasha looked down, choosing her words carefully. “Not to alarm you, but I think they’re Russian.”

Both his eyebrows rose. “Should…should I be alarmed?”

“If they’re here for me…” Natasha’s hands clenched together, slick with Clint’s blood. “Yes.”

“What makes you think…” He stopped, breathless, but gave her a look that clearly said _you know what I mean_.

“Gut feeling?” Natasha tried. “The sex trafficking ring couldn’t have mobilized that fast, or found our safehouse, or… They were professionals.” He kept looking at her. “They seemed to know my moves. At least, nothing I did could shake them.”

“Hard to shake someone in nighttime traffic on a Friday in an old city with narrow roads,” Clint pointed out.

Natasha swallowed. “Just a gut feeling,” she said again.

* * *

“Clint. Clint!”

“Ow. I’m awake,” he murmured. “…Sorry.” Now wrapped up in the rest of Natasha’s undershirt, the wounds in his side and on his head looked a lot less serious, though his skin was still pale and pupils still dilated. It had been two hours of silence from above, though Natasha was not naïve enough to think their enemies, after making such an effort to take them out, had just given up after one car explosion. She had also inventoried their combined supplies—one gun, one bullet in the chamber; one bow, no arrows; one lighter, half empty; two five-inch knives, one from each of them; six throwing knives from Natasha’s left boot; three glow sticks also courtesy of her boot; five scentless emergency energy bars that had been sewn into the lining of their vests; and one industrial sink that still ran rust-tinted water that was better than nothing. “…What were we talking about?”

“The importance of staying awake when you have a concussion.”

“Ha ha.”

“How to get a signal out,” Natasha told him. “If I go up…”

Clint’s gaze bored into hers and she wondered if he was expecting her to leave him behind. To die. “They’ll be searching,” was all he said.

“And you’ll be alone,” she replied.

“With one bullet between us, not sure who’ll be safer,” Clint said, the corners of his mouth lifting. A hand lifted to prob his wounded side. “You should go.” _You’ll have a chance._

“No,” she told him, the small part of her mind that had been undecided now suddenly made up. “Who’ll keep you awake?”

“Nat,” he said. “I’m not going to…I can’t. I can barely keep from passing out as it is.”

“Then I’ll wake you up to check your pupils every few hours anyway,” Natasha said obstinately.

“What’re you even gonna do if I have a brain bleed anyway?” Clint asked. “’S’not like we’re sitting on a last resort option that we can take if we need it.”

“Then don’t have a brain bleed,” Natasha told him seriously, standing up. She crossed to the rusted sink, cupping one hand and turning the spigot with the other. She carried the palmful of water back to him, carefully tipping it into his mouth. “Like you said, Coulson will look for us.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“I do. A little.”

Clint’s eyes closed, his neck relaxing from the strain of looking her direction. “That’ll have to do.”

* * *

It was daytime. Not that Natasha could see that, of course, as the third sub-level of whatever this industrial building used to be didn’t have windows. But she knew enough to estimate the hours as they slipped past, and she knew their time was running out. Even if the men after them had been confused by the car explosion in the darkness, in the daylight…it would become clear that they had escaped. They would hunt her down. Just as the Red Room had always promised.

There would be no defectors.

Ironically, it was dark in the room in which Natasha sat, having turned off the overhead lights since they were hurting Clint’s eyes. Not that it mattered now, with him passed out on the floor, but she kept them off anyway, muscles locked, waiting… The gun was just in front of her, her legs tucked up into her chest as she waited for them to come.

Maybe it would be Yelena. Two years younger than her, still a recruit when Natasha had been put under… They all had been, she presumed. Perhaps it would be Yelena’s graduation test… Fitting, for the next Black Widow to put down the one who had gone astray. Yelena might even have been relieved to receive the mission, if she thought she could beat her, if the memories of that joint undercover operation so long ago had been successfully wiped from her mind as the Room intended.

Or, was it possible her betrayal could have drawn out Madame B herself? Natasha’s hands twisted together as she stared at where she knew the door to be, though it was not visible through the darkness. She could almost see it happening, a swarm of men in tac suits bursting through and pushing aside the few crates blocking the entrance, surrounding her and Clint with their weapons ready. And Madame B stepping through that door. Starched gray muslin, one and a half inch heels clicking on the concrete, the look in her eyes that had always meant today, one of her classmates—maybe Natalia herself—would die. Madame B affixing her with that cold gaze. Expressing her _disappointment_.

She jolted forward, hands scrambling for the gun in front of her. She pulled it in, close to her chest, fingers wrapped around the grip like a vice. It wouldn’t just be an execution, it wouldn’t be enough to make an example of the Widow who’d had the audacity to get away. It would be punishment, in all the myriad, horrible ways the Madame had perfected, and then it would be wheeling her down into the laboratory tunnels, strapped to a white stretcher, to find out _why_ their prize had run away, where their training and programming and conditioning had gone so very wrong. To have the traitor’s brain in their blue-gloved hands and finally have the freedom to play without regard for consequence…

She was shaking, Natasha realized with a start. She gripped the gun even stronger to compensate, bringing it up to her own head. She wouldn’t let them take her again. She would die before submitting to the Red Room’s methods, before they either killed her or broke her mind or finally _succeeded_ and set her loose on everyone she knew in her new life.

Clint.

The gun slowly lowered, then turned to face him. She only had the one bullet; shouldn’t he, the one who had believed in her, be the one to receive it? She owed him for refusing to take her life in Japan—she would never stop owing him. But would he even want it? He would, she was sure he would if he knew what was waiting for him upon capture, what tortures and insanity the Room could dream up. Natasha still knew so little about him. If she made this decision for him, who would he be leaving behind?

“Barney.” Natasha’s head shot upward, hearing Clint start to shift and move. “Barney, no. No!” The gun clattered onto the floor as she flipped herself onto her hands and knees, crawling a few feet to reach him.

“Clint,” she whispered, shaking his shoulders. The skin of his bare forearms was hot to the touch. “Clint, wake up.” Natasha felt the moment he snapped awake, the sudden spasm of his muscles as all the pain came back, the terror of the darkness before he remembered where he was. “Clint.”

“Nat,” he said, voice a little shaky.

“You were having a nightmare.”

“Yeah.” He sucked in a heavy breath, or as heavy as he could with his right side on fire. She was familiar with that kind of pain.

She felt around for one of their emergency glowsticks, then cracked it, the liquid bathing them in a soft green light. Natasha set it on the ground about a foot from his head. “Who’s Barney?”

“Three weeks straight of nightmares and kicking me out of bed and my first one and you ask who is Barney?” Natasha was quiet. Clint sighed and stared up at the murky black ceiling. “Barney’s my older brother. He’s the one, after our mom died, who convinced me to run away and found us jobs in the circus.”

“Is he alive?”

“Far as I know. When we were there, he fell in with a bad crowd. So did I, at the time. Haven’t seen him in years.”

“Since you joined S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Natasha surmised.

“Longer.”

“I’m sorry.”

Clint’s eyes glinted at her in the darkness. “Don’t be. He was a piece of shit.” He sighed, shifting his body slightly on the hard concrete to try to get in a more comfortable position and then stiffened, thinking better of it. “Your turn,” he said, voice laced with pain. She shifted, silent. “Just think of it as giving me intel on the enemy out there.”

Her voice was hard, brittle. “What do you want to know?”

“The Red Room. Who were they?”

“In the Cold War, a division of the Russian government so secret half the government didn’t know it existed,” Natasha shrugged her shoulders. “After the Cold War, things changed, and I escaped. Officially, it was shut down after that. Or so I thought.”

“What was it like?”

She thought about it—about the training, the other girls, the sparring and the target practice and the meals in the refectory and the requirements of advancement. “It was normal.” She picked up the glowstick, turning it over in her hands. “And I know how fucked up that sounds. But I was raised there. It was everything I knew at the time. They made me who I am.”

“Who you were,” Clint corrected her. She nodded. “Were there…others?”

“Classmates. Adversaries. A few…”

“Friends?”

“We weren’t allowed to call it that.” Natasha thought of Elena, teeth clenched. “Most didn’t survive the training, so it was right of them to warn us not to get attached.”

“Marina?” Clint asked. “You said her name in your sleep once.”

Natasha twisted the glowstick, allowing the light to play out against the cold concrete. “We used to sneak out when we were kids. Steal discarded bread from the bakery, and then go hide in the rafters of a studio in Moscow to watch the ballerinas dance, and wonder what it would be like if we ever…ever left.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“There was this group of girls in my class,” Natasha said. “Cестричество, or the Sisterhood, as that was the year Madame B had us speaking English all the time. I was seven, I think. They acted like it was a secret club, a pact to help each other out during the tests…to fight fair, and try not to injure each other, to spend time together when we had time alone. They invited me to join.” She swallowed. “But I had just lost…someone, another girl, and so I said no. I had learned my lesson. You can’t keep secrets from Madame B. All of those girls died, or were _reconditioned_ and never the same. I don’t know who told.” Her voice dropped. “I don’t know if _I_ told.”

Clint found her hand and squeezed it. “And Marina?”

“Dead,” Natasha said. _I did that, too._

“I’m sorry.”

She removed her hand from his, using it to feel his forehead. “You’re burning up,” she said.

He made a face. “Nat, don’t change the subject.”

“Fever means infection.”

“Unless you have antibiotics stashed away here somewhere, it’s not really relevant.” He adopted a gentler tone. “I know you haven’t been sleeping.”

“Yeah, I’ve been keeping watch.” She indicated her gun.

“You know what I mean. Before.”

“None of your business, Barton,” Natasha said, but there was no heart in it. “The girls. The training. The targets. The collateral damage. Does it really matter?”

“Of course it does, if it’s hurting you.”

“I never used to have this problem,” Natasha told him. “I didn’t use to be as…” _Weak_. “…as haunted.”

“Makes sense,” Clint said, and she shot him a questioning look. “You’re opening up now, to me, to yourself, to the world. You’re laughing at things like _Star Wars_. Not repressing is _good_ , Natasha.”

“I like repressing.”

“Okay, well, repressing a little less is good,” he told her. With great effort, Clint reached out to her, fingers extended. “Come on—try to get some real sleep.”

She frowned, looking toward the door. “But what if—”

“You’re going to hold them off with your one bullet?” His voice was soft. “Might as well sleep while you can, Nat.”

“Fine,” she said, conceding his point. Natasha looked uncertainly at his extended arm before curling up next to him, feeling and not quite disliking the way his arm curled around her shoulders, tucking her close to him.

“Is this okay?” he checked, nearly invisible in the darkness. She must have been lying on the glowstick, somewhere, but she was not about to get up and look.

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

* * *

Natasha woke, unsure who or what was bumping against her face and rattling her jaw. She sat up quickly, blinking as the glowstick illuminated Clint’s spasming body.

Seizure.

She half-straddled him immediately, one leg rolling him toward her onto his side so he didn’t choke, leaving her hands free to tug off her jacket and stuff it under his head so he didn’t injure himself further. His body shook violently, mouth filling with pearly foam. His eyes were mostly closed, but she could see white through the small slits. “Clint,” she said, as if that could snap him out of it. It didn’t, and she could only watch as his body continued to jerk for at least another minute until the seizure finally subsided. “Clint,” she said again, fingers trailing lightly over his cheek and jaw.

His eyes fluttered open. “What happened?”

“You seized.”

Clint was quiet for a moment, his expression unreadable except for the constant grimace of pain. “You think it’s infection, or the concussion?”

“Speculating is useless.”

“You should go,” he said again, eyes already slipping closed again. “Send someone for me if you get out.”

“No,” she told him, and it felt like a promise. “Our best chance is still together.”

Seventy-two hours, three seizures, two trips through the sewage line connecting these industrial buildings later, she was less sure about that, but still holding to it like a lifeline. Relocating with a hundred-and-seventy-odd pound man through sludge and grime, trying to keep his wounds clean had been hard, but determination turned into what seemed to be a feral desperation had seen them through. Clint was absent, almost entirely so, lost in a fever world of dreams with every sign that he was worsening, instead of getting better. The tromp of boots above always alerted her that they were coming, but this was the end of the line. The rest of the sewer was grated, impossible to get through without a blow torch—her stand would have to be here.

She had dragged Clint to the corner of the room, and chose her location for the number of empty steel barrels littered around that might stand a chance against their large caliber rounds. Dragging them into place had been a feat in and of itself, leaving her sweating and vaguely dizzy with lack of food. Natasha could hear a chopper up above, knew they must truly be rallying the troops now to find them. She checked the final bullet in her gun’s chamber, hands clasped tight around it as she heard the Red Room operatives get closer, tucking herself to the side of the door so they wouldn’t see her when they first came through. The sound of their boots got more defined, pounding down the stairwell to their level, and she concentrated on keeping her breathing steady.

The door banged open, and the first man got Natasha’s bullet straight between the eyes. She was on the next in less than a second, her now useless gun falling from her grasp to free her hands for wrapping around the unsuspecting man’s neck. He was down before he could even call out, their closeness preventing the other men from shooting her.

Their mistake.

She jabbed her elbow at the throat of the next, tripping him and sending him to the ground as he choked. Another tried to edge behind her but Natasha was ready for that, bringing up her foot at exactly the right moment to catch him between the legs. The few seconds incapacitating him took cost her the advantage on her next attacker, a woman who caught her first punch and her second, nearly wrenching Natasha’s arm out of its socket until she managed to unbalance her, landing her assailant flat on her back. Her right hand found the knife strapped to her lower thigh and drew it, slicing it in a deadly arc towards the two men coming at her. One went down with a roundhouse kick to the head, the other with his throat slit open in a scarlet smile. Blood spattered Natasha’s face and hands, dripping through her clenched fingers. The last man raised his gun, forcing Natasha to hit the ground to avoid the spray of bullets and hope that Clint—somewhere behind her—was shielded by the metal barrels. Due to the slipperiness of her grip, her aim was off when she threw the knife, missing the man’s unprotected jugular entirely and slashing him in the arm instead. The man swore, letting his weapon fall to press his hand to the wound, and Natasha plucked one of the guns from a dead body and shot him with it.

More men poured through the door and Natasha ducked behind some of the cover she had created, firing indiscriminately. A lucky shot pinged through regardless, cutting a deep graze through her arm, but she kept firing until the rest had gone down. A twitch caught her eye, and one of the men she’d only stunned before yanked on her ankle, sending her crashing to the ground. His fists immediately connected with her eye, her sternum, but Natasha pulled a smaller knife from her boot and slashed out blindly until she managed to extricate herself and spring to her feet. She pointed the gun at him. _Bang_. _Bang_. _Click_.

The man was dead, but a third wave was coming. She crouched behind the barrels. Her eyes alighted on the next nearest submachine gun just as a new swarm burst through the open doorway, a clear sightline between them and where she needed to be to grab the weapon. Natasha scooted back a few paces and then sprang up, both feet landing squarely on top of the barrels for barely a second before she had spring-boarded off of them into the clump of men.

“WAIT!”

For some reason, Natasha stopped, thighs clamped around one man’s neck. Her eyes fell on the small eagle patches on the shoulders of their black tac vests.

S.H.I.E.L.D.

Friendlies.

Because she had such things now.

_Barton_.

“Romanoff, stand down,” Coulson ordered, stepping into view. “We’re here for extract.”

“Prove it’s you,” she demanded. “Say something they wouldn’t know. Something random.”

“You like _Phantom Menace_ over _Attack of the Clones_ ,” he said. “And Fury has an orange cat named Goose.”

She slid off the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent’s shoulders without so much as an apology, combat adrenaline fading quickly to be replaced by complete and utter exhaustion. “Clint needs medical evac,” she told Coulson, moving quickly around the barrel setup and assuming he would follow. “ _Now_.”

“Robards, Evanson,” Coulson said, and two of the S.H.I.E.L.D. grunts rushed forward. Natasha barely let them, but stepped back at the last second, allowing them access to Clint’s body, pale and unmoving. He spoke into his earpiece. “Need medical evac to meet us at the entrance to the northwest building immediately. Agent Barton is down.” He looked at Natasha. “He okay to move without a stretcher?”

She nodded. “I have been.”

The two agents, Robards and Evanson, carried him between them with the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents flanking as they rushed as quickly as they could up the stairs. At the building’s door, the promised medical team awaited, amid the smoky sky of a drawn-out battle. They put Clint on a stretcher, moving with swift professionalism, but it still wasn’t fast enough for Natasha—she knew he was nearly dead. At least the medical chopper was already there, landed on a flat plane of concrete with its blades spinning half-speed in preparation for takeoff. Another was inbound from the right.

“Coulson, is that ours?” one of the agents asked, pointing at it.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ, do we have any other choppers besides 10481 in the air in Budapest?” their handler consulted his earpiece. His face blanched. “That’s not ours.”

She looked around. “Give me your gun,” Natasha said to one of the agents coming down from an exterior stairwell, motioning at the sniper rifle in his grip.

“You can’t take down a helicopter with this,” the man protested even as she snatched it off of him. She aimed upwards, willing her food-starved limbs to steady as she peered through the scope. Natasha knew this kind of chopper, had studied all kinds under Ivan’s tutelage and then later, on her own, keeping up with the newest blueprints and schematics.

She fired. Her first shot blasted through the right-side hydraulics line. She fired again, this time hitting the central component of the tail rotor, before lowering the scope from her eyes. The helicopter began to drop, spinning in circles and listing to the side before finally crashing to the ground some hundred yards away, blades slashing through vehicles and power lines and anything else they came into contact with before snapping off entirely on impact with the concrete. Natasha thrust the sniper rifle back at the flabbergasted S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.

“With me, Romanoff,” Coulson said, motioning her over. She looked between him and the helicopter Clint had been loaded onto while she was taking out the enemy chopper.

“I’m going with him.”

“They’re going straight to a S.H.I.E.L.D. hospital in Bucharest,” he told her. “He’ll be in the best of hands. We’ll head there too, as soon as—” The helicopter’s blades sped up.

“I’m going with him,” Natasha said, beginning to sprint toward the copter as it lifted off the ground and barreling through the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in her way. It was above five feet off the ground when she reached it.

Natasha leaped, putting all of her savage fear and desperation into the jump, and felt her fingers close around the sharp metal of the chopper’s landing gear. She hung on, dangling as the chopper continued its attempt to pull away from the ground, tilting in midair with her added weight to one side. Then she pulled herself up, grabbing the chopper door and pulling it open before hauling herself inside. The S.H.I.E.L.D. medical team hurriedly made room for her, an unimportant mixture of fear and awe on their faces.

She wasn’t going to leave him now.

* * *

Natasha sat in a chair in the corner of the room facing both doorways out of habit. Her legs were tucked up to her chest, her eyes ostensibly focused on the rhythmic green line of Clint’s heart monitor. She breathed in and out slowly, pulling in air through her nose and letting it out through her mouth. The hospital smelled sharply of disinfectant.

But they had escaped the Red Room operatives sent to retrieve her. Probably.

Her hand played with one of the few knives left tucked into the small slits in her boot, getting her hands grimy again.

There was a knock at the door, and Coulson stuck his head in. “Mind if I join you?” Natasha blinked, then nodded, sliding the knife back in and wiping her hands on a moderately more clean part of her tac suit. Coulson entered, carrying a dark purple bottle with a label marked with golden foil. “I got briefed after he was out of surgery. Any change?”

“No,” Natasha replied, not moving a muscle as he pulled a chair up beside her. “He’s still out.”

“I brought a plum _pálinka_ ,” Coulson said, setting the bottle on a side table. “It’s a type of Hungarian brandy…a really nice brandy.”

“I’m more of a vodka girl.”

“Isn’t that a little stereotypical?” he asked, lips tugging upward in a small smile.

“Isn’t bringing alcohol as a get-well gift a little stereotypical?” she countered. She matched his expression. “And strange, given he won’t be in any state to drink it.”

“Fair enough,” Coulson said. “In the meantime, are you ready for debrief now?”

She sat up a little straighter. “Yes, sir.”

“I looked into what you asked,” he said. “These weren’t Red Room operatives. It wasn’t them, and there’s no indication that they were involved.”

Natasha’s eyebrows lifted. “Did you check—”

“All back channels, everything. The men were Italian. Kovacs moved in on their boss’s turf about two weeks ago, and they were planning on putting him back in his place. They thought their operational details had been leaked, and him being moved from his base of operations was to protect him. They thought you were his bodyguards.”

“But after he was dead,” Natasha pointed out. “Why still come after us?”

“His ledger. All his clients, all the girls—locations, money laundering businesses, everything they needed to take over his operation—it wasn’t with him. So they gave chase.”

“We didn’t take it.”

“No. We recovered it,” Coulson told her. He caught the look of incomprehension still in her eye. “They’re not hunting you, Natasha.”

“Not this time,” she allowed finally.

Coulson pulled out a small voice recorder. “Now, if you’re ready, I’d like a short summary of what happened on this op. The full details can wait until your official report, but Fury requested it, given Agent Barton’s condition.”

She tilted her head. “Should I be concerned?”

Their handler smiled. “You saved his life. You have nothing to be worried about.” He clicked on the recorder. “Agents Phillip J. Coulson and Natasha A. Romanoff.” He looked at her. “Please start from when you first arrived in Budapest.”

“Agent Barton and I went to the safehouse and made sure everything was secure. Then we started surveillance on the target, starting around one p.m. local time. When it got dark, we proceeded to the building indicated to be the target’s base of operations and captured him…”

She fell silent when she had finished, and Coulson looked at his watch. “Total operational time until extract…one hundred fifty-nine hours.” He shut off the recorder, placing back in the interior pocket of his suit jacket. “Thank you, Agent Romanoff.” He held out a key card. “I got you a hotel room a block away. You should get changed, take a shower. I’ll be here in case he wakes up.”

“Thanks, but I’m staying,” Natasha said.

“You still smell like sewage.”

Natasha glanced down at herself, and knew he was right. “Sorry. But still.”

“All right. A compromise, then.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Have the nurse bring you some standard edition S.H.I.E.L.D. clothes. There’s a bathroom down the hall so you can at least change, and then you come back here and get those wounds looked at.” She shifted, feeling the burn of the untreated bullet wound in her arm and the half-healed one on her hip. “Fair?”

“Fair,” Natasha agreed, standing. “Stay with him?”

“Of course,” Coulson nodded. She exited the room into the corridor and hailed the first S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel that didn’t look like they were running off to save a patient’s life, and a few minutes later was wiping—scrubbing—grime off her extremities and washing her face in the sink once she was dressed. Feeling remarkably better, she headed back to Clint’s hospital room with her tac suit bundled up in a plastic bag. She sat down in the chair next to Coulson and caught the silvery bar he tossed her. “I’m going to guess you haven’t eaten anything yet either,” he said.

“How do you know all of these things?” She slit the wrapper with her nails and took a small bite, stomach roiling with the intrusion of food after so many days with next to nothing.

“I was Clint’s handler for three years before you came along,” Coulson told her with a small smirk. “Mouthy young assassins with self-preservation issues are kind of my specialty.”

She narrowed her eyes, keeping her voice perfectly enigmatic. “I’m not that young.” Natasha forced herself to take another small bite of the protein bar and submit to the doctor’s cleaning and stitching up of her wounds, including the one on her hip that Coulson excused himself for. When he returned, they resumed their positions in the chairs to wait. Natasha force-fed herself another bar despite the protests of her stomach while Coulson worked on his laptop, both sitting in a companionable silence amid the steady and reassuring beep of the heart monitor.

“Well don’t you two look domestic,” a voice croaked, and Natasha looked up to see Clint blinking blearily at her. Both of them stood up immediately, coming to his bedside.

“Already cracking jokes, he must be on the mend,” Coulson said with a glance at Natasha. She had eyes only for Clint, gaze intent on his face. It was still pale, but filled with infinitely more life than in that warehouse. How close he’d come to almost dying… How close she’d come to losing this, when she’d only just found it. “How are you feeling, Agent Barton?”

Clint paused, as if considering the question. “High,” he decided.

“I’ll let them know to tone down your pain meds,” Coulson told him kindly.

Barton’s hand closed over their handler’s wrist. “No. Don’t.” Natasha watched as both of them laughed.

“I’m glad to see you’re okay, Clint,” Coulson said. “You both gave us quite a scare.”

“Aw, Phil…”

Coulson glanced at her, then at Clint, Natasha still staring at him hungrily. He patted the archer’s shoulder gently. “Let me know if you need anything; I’ll be close by. I’ll give the two of you the room for a bit.”

“Something I need to know?” Clint asked, giving Natasha a weird look once he was gone.

“I think he’s just surprised,” Natasha said carefully, finally looking away from him in favor of the clean white bedspread.

“At what? That I lived? I haven’t died yet, you know…so that’s a pretty good track record,” Clint grinned.

“Surprised that I stayed.”

He was silent for a moment. “Thanks,” Clint said, forcing her to look at him again, “for saving me.”

“That’s what partners are for,” Natasha told him lightly.

Clint smiled. “So, what did I miss? And speaking of…why am I here? I can’t really feel anything right now thanks to the meds and everything’s a bit hazy…”

“Do you want me to list off your injuries?”

“Uh, no, I wasn’t—wait, _list_? That’s not concerning at all,” he joked. “But sure, go for it, Romanoff.”

“Gunshot wound that hit no major organs but gave you blood poisoning, concussion that turned into a bit of a brain bleed, then the three seizures that could be related to either,” Natasha listed off.

“And you?” Clint asked her, glancing up and down.

“Couple grazes. Nothing serious,” she promised him.

He leaned back against the pillows, eyes twinkling. “Well, you made out much better than me. Kind of embarrassing, really. What do you say we never talk about Budapest again?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: brief contemplation of suicide (to escape a fate worse than death)
> 
> Hope you enjoyed my rendition of Budapest! If you want to know who Elena is, head over to my two-shot [Living a Lie](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14662755/chapters/33874518). As for Marina, I highly recommend the 2014-15 Black Widow series, specifically issues 16, 19, and 20 if you’re into comics. If not, basically she was Natasha’s escapee partner-in-crime when they were kids until they got caught by the Red Room, which didn’t really care that they were sneaking out since they were using the skill sets they had learned to do it. Later, when Natasha was a Black Widow, she was assigned to work an op where Marina had an established cover for several months/years, and she found out that Marina preferred the cover life to her real one and had thus been compromised. The Red Room ordered her to clean up the mess, so Natasha ended up killing Marina, her boyfriend, and her cat (sad).
> 
> There is also at least two blink-and-you’ll-miss-it _Firefly _references in here, because hey, it’s 2004, so kudos if you caught them.__
> 
> __Feedback always appreciated! Also leave me a comment if you just wanna commiserate over the lack of movie today... :(_ _


	33. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha finds Clint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glad you guys enjoyed the Budapest chapter! 
> 
> Meanwhile, in the present, Natasha's making some major progress too...

_Natasha has the location of Diana Sokolova thanks to the cooperation of Bucky Barnes. She is finally on her way to rescue Clint Barton._

Present _._

Anticipation coursed through her with every pulse of blood sent to her extremities. Natasha felt more awake than she had in days, no, weeks. More alert. It was running on pure hope.

Sokolova, and through her Barton, was within her grasp, finally. It was the first actual connection she’d had to Clint in this entire goddamn expedition, and now she knew where to look.

Natasha had a fresh S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinjet fully stocked with supplies, and three more full of STRIKE teams on standby, should she need them, but she had convinced Fury a surgical strike was more appropriate, especially given that she might have a personal connection with Sokolova. She had satellite views of the city, though, and analysts had isolated the compound to give her an aerial view. She reviewed those images as the Quinjet flew on autopilot out of St. Petersburg before getting up and walking the length of the Quinjet, belting on weapons and nearly layering her body with the number of knives she strapped to it. If this woman had been a student in the Red Room as well, then there was little doubt this might come to knives eventually. They were practically a tradition, after all.

The Quinjet set down on a strip of rocky land only a quarter mile from the compound, which appeared to be a defunct military installation on top of an old Soviet bunker last known to be thirteen levels deep. There were no guards as she approached on foot, no sign of any life at all. She spurned the main entrance where military trucks would have entered once upon a time and found a side-door, picking the lock with ease. Above her head, the blinking red light of an active security camera caught her eye, and Natasha knew she was being watched.

It didn’t feel right. Cold pricked at Natasha’s skin as she entered the facility, a gun in each hand and a belt full of grenades. The hope was fading, rapidly replaced with a sense of foreboding. Maybe Sokolova had thought herself untraceable, and hadn’t known she was coming, but even after tripping that camera, there was no mobilization. No cocking of guns, no tromp of boots in the distance. Just more empty gray hallways, every room accessible. She cleared two whole levels of the bunker without encountering a soul or a locked door. It was like…it was like she was being led.

Well, if it was a trap, Barton was the bait. And the most obvious place to put bait was the bottom floor. Natasha hit the number thirteen on the elevator panel, then holstered her guns and climbed up to the top of the metal box using the outline of the pad as a stepping stone, wedging herself in one corner well off the ground. When the doors opened, no firing squad awaited her. She released herself from her perch and hit the floor lightly, drawing her weapons again.

This floor was eerily silent as floors one and two had been, with the same nondescript walls and flickering fluorescent lighting. The only sounds to be heard was her smooth, tense breathing, the slight scuff of her boots against the cement floor, and the faint dripping of water that explained the mildew smell. And was that…footsteps? Yes. She sprinted forward toward the only sign of life she had seen at all in this entire godforsaken place. Adrenaline fueled her, making each stride effortless, and she skidded to a stop behind a solid steel door. Instead of a lock, a numerical keypad was attached to the wall next to it, so Natasha pulled out a stick of C-4.

“Stand back!” she shouted, no longer caring about stealth. If there was someone here, they already knew exactly where she was. Natasha stuck the plastic explosive to the door where the handle should have been and pressed a detonator into the supple material. She retreated down the hallway and around the corner and covered her ears before hitting the trigger.

The world reverberated, and dust and rubble shot past her down the hallway. Covering her mouth with her sleeve, Natasha waded into the gray haze. Where the steel door had been was merely an imperfect outline of one, with a large hole in the center that bled out into the cement wall and was molten around the edges. She stepped through carefully, coming up on yet another door only ten feet in. This one had a standard lock, and a wide, rectangular hole cut into the bottom of it, about fourteen inches wide and two high. Exactly the kind of thing you’d feed a prisoner through.

Natasha’s breath caught in her chest. “Clint!” she called, foregoing her lock-picking skills and slamming her foot straight into the door at its weakest point, just below the lock. The door shook, but held strong. “Clint!” Her second kick broke the locking mechanism and the door banged open. Inside was a long room that looked to have once been used as a long-distance shooting range, going by the sliding rods across the ceiling for hanging up paper targets and the painted markings on the floor. It stretched maybe an eighth mile, with enough room for eight or ten people to shoot at once, depending on how packed in they were. She looked down as she crossed the threshold—metal trays stacked together, one with the remains of a meal on it.

“Clint!” she called again, her call echoing down the chamber. A figure stood up at the other end of the room, the outline hazy in a way that couldn’t be accounted for by the distance. She charged forward, running headlong across the space towards him.

“Nat!” he called back, and she knew it was Clint. He was here. He was alive. She had found him.

“Nat!” This time, his shout triggered alarm within her, and she turned expecting to see men and guns appear in the doorway, but they were still alone. She turned back to him in confusion, watching him gesture wildly at her. “Get out! Natasha, get out!”

Her gun was raised, looking for the threat, but she couldn’t shoot at the white mist slowly rising out of the grates on the floor. She took a deep breath in the clearer upper air immediately, then held it, running toward him again. “Go!” he called again, but she was only twenty feet from him now, stuffing her gun back in its holster. _Not without you_ , she signed in lieu of wasting any of her precious air. Natasha skidded to a stop in front of him, allowing herself zero time to check the state of his body or say any of the things she wanted to say, but focused on the set of three-foot chains binding him by each ankle to the wall. There were at least six separate strands, each bolted into a different section of the wall behind him. Natasha drew her gun again and shot at the chain, hoping for no ricochets. Each chain took two well-placed bullets to break, with Clint looking on desperately now that he had seemed to accept she wasn’t leaving. Her head was beginning to feel woozy by the fourth chain, and she let out the breath she had been holding, drawing in another. Momentary relief hit her, her sight clearing briefly, and she took care of chains four and five with ease.

She had just one bullet to go on the sixth chain when she noticed herself begin to fall, as if from far away. Her vision flickered and then went black, the gun slipping from her grasp.

Clint caught her just before she hit the floor.

* * *

Natasha awoke to pain. It was familiar, really—even with the addition of the last twelve years most of her life had been spent waking in pain. Even with Clint watching her back, S.H.I.E.L.D. missions weren’t always—

Clint.

The memories of the last six months came rushing back, culminating in the memory that she had _found him_.

“There you are,” a voice said in Russian. Natasha kept her eyes closed, her face slack. A boot connected, hard, with the flesh of her stomach. “None of that, Natalia. We both know you’re awake.” The voice was female. Natasha reluctantly opened her eyes.

She was lying on a cold stone floor, hands and feet bound not only behind her back but together. It forced her into a sort of backbend that was not uncomfortable with her level of flexibility but left her chest and abdomen very exposed, as well as all the essential organs therein. From the way she could no longer feel the hard stone biting into her ear or the arm trapped underneath her torso, she had been in this position for at least a few hours. Natasha began working the fingers of that hand as much as she could within the confines of the bonds, shifting to the side to relieve the pressure on her upper arm as well.

“Welcome back,” the voice said, lifting her eyes upward. The woman’s voice was low and grating, like a politician well-practiced at rallies, and Natasha committed it to memory if she should ever need to identify it in the future. As for right now, she did not recognize it—if this woman was from the Red Room, Natasha had likely only known her as a girl or young woman. As they had matured, Madame B had taken great pleasure in analyzing and tutoring them on their voices, though they all had learned to modulate them years before. Natasha had always been called husky, or occasionally hoarse—good for the bedroom performances, for quiet heart-to-cover with a mark, for pretending to be smaller and weaker and sadder than she was. Sokolova, or whatever her real name was, was better suited for commanding and being followed, or fomenting a revolution.

Turning her head, she looked at her captor for the first time. The vague resemblance to Madame B did not stop at her voice, a cold thing that could never quite be motherly no matter how much it was softened. The woman standing above her also shared the sharpness of her gaze, the unmoving line of her mouth. She was beautiful—all Red Room graduates were—with blonde hair curled and cut short just past her jawline. She looked to be around Natasha’s age, give or take a few years. Not that that meant anything in her attempt to identify her—Natasha herself was twenty-nine or thirty-four or forty-nine depending on who you asked and how you counted the fifteen-some-odd years spent in cryo.

The woman seemed to preen under Natasha’s scrutiny, so she shifted her gaze, looking as far as she could to the left and the right for exits and anything else she might use. To the left, a large stone entrancewayleading to another room set with ornate electric torches for light. Stonework, not cement—she was no longer in the military bunker at all.

To the right…Barton.

He was strung up, quite literally, and gazing at her with a pleading look, a gag in his mouth. His arms were tied behind his back, and his legs together, perched as he was standing on the base of an old wooden chair with a loop of rope around his neck. The noose was tied to the chandelier bolted into the ceiling far above him. “Let him go,” she told the woman, “and maybe I’ll let you live.”

“You, Natalia, are not in a position to make such a bargain,” she replied.

“Who are you?”

The self-satisfied look faded from the woman’s face, replaced by something harder and crueler. Her throat bared. “You don’t remember me?”

“Should I?” Natasha asked, feigning nonchalance even as she scanned the room with her peripheral vision again.

“I remember you,” the woman said, raising her chin. “That day in the courtyard. Sparring practice. Don’t you remember the feeling of an eleven year-old’s bone breaking beneath your fingers? Or did we mean that little to you?”

Her brow furrowed. Natasha—or should she say Natalia—had spent many a day in the courtyard encircled by the Red Room Academy’s walls, both in her training and, less often, after graduation. Sparring occurred every day on that lawn, watered with so much young blood it was surprising it had survived. And breaking bones? The ‘we’ of the woman’s statement made her think she hadn’t been a classmate, a peer. A demonstration, then. Natasha pursed her lips. “Zoya?”

“Zoya’s dead,” the woman said dismissively, revealing nothing through baleful hazel eyes. “After you left that day, I trained, and when the advancement ceremony came I killed her. I choked her with my bare hands.” Natasha racked her brain—who else had been there that day? “But that’s not going to impress you, Natalia,” the woman continued. “We’ve both done much worse for the Red Room, to our own classmates.” She stooped down, somehow making the motion graceful, placing her face less than a foot from Natasha’s. “Gauge their eyes out with our fingernails, perhaps...” Yes, Natasha had done that, felt the squish and pop and ooze— “…or feel the carotid break between our teeth. Anything to win.”

The woman stood up, almost proud again, and glanced back at Clint, hand on her hip. “Does _he_ know about that, do you think? When you defected and left us there to die, did you tell them _everything_ that you had done?”

Natasha kept her mouth shut, running it all through her head again. Demonstration. Zoya Ogievich. The girl in the hallway, the one who’d come out unhurt. The one who Natasha had not reported for being out of bounds when she was supposed to, the one she had _saved,_ or at the very least, spared. “Alya,” Natasha said. “Alya Naumenka.”

The woman smiled, as one might smile at a dog that had finally learned a new trick but that would still be beaten for taking so long to do it. “Very good.” Reaching out one hand, she gripped Natasha’s forearm and pulled her upright, until she was kneeling precariously in front of her, hands and feet still bound. Natasha checked the ties behind her back to see if any had loosened in the shift. Unfortunately not.

“All right, so this is about the Red Room,” she said. “Doesn’t explain why Agent Barton is here. Doesn’t explain why, if you wanted to catch me, you didn’t lay a better trail to do it so that it didn’t take more than six months to find you.” Natasha gave a thin smile. “Not a great plan. Madame B taught us better than that, _sestra_.”

A knife was out and at Natasha’s jugular instantly. “We are _not_ sisters!” The tip of it lacerated the column of her throat; she could feel the sting and the small rivulet of blood that began to trickle down from it. Alya removed the weapon, wiping it off on Natasha’s sleeve before sheathing it again. It was only then that Natasha realized she was wearing an old Red Room uniform to match Alya’s. So much for all the weapons she’d packed. “You do not know me. You did not care about us—the ones you left behind.”

“I went back,” Natasha said, not so much for Alya’s benefit but to service her own confusion,“I looked—”

“You were the one Madame B told us to emulate,” Alya continued. “You were the one she compared us to. Natalia always completes the mission, she would say. Do you see her dance? Natalia is made of marble.” She crossed her arms. “Some of us hated you for that. Some of us looked up to you. That was me, until you arranged for me to be shamed in front of the class and I saw you for who you really were. Until you left the Red Room, and left us behind without a second thought. Until the government lost faith in the program after your defection and shut it down. Shut all of us down.”

Alya looked at her, chin held up again. “I was old enough to survive, and young enough to slip through the cracks, to avoid the cleaners sent to erase any trace of our existence. But I had been so close, before it was all ripped away from me. All I had done towards graduation, all I had been trained to do, all we had been _made_ to do, that was just for…nothing.”

A twinge of regret pricked Natasha that had been absent before. It was true—when she had fled the Red Room for Ivan’s apartment, the fog of reconditioning had made her give little thought to any of the students left behind. Once they had recruited her, Coulson and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. spent most of their efforts trying to convince her she was not to blame for acts taken out under the Room’s tutelage, not the other way around. She had visited the site, once, in the time after the long year post-Budapest she’d spent shaking the majority of her programming. Natasha had found the Room missing, defunct, and non-existent, which was as good of closure as she’d been likely to get.

And, some part of her still maintained, more than she deserved.

Alya’s hazel eyes blinked once, twice. “No concern for the lives you left behind. No concern for legacy.”

_Legacy_ … Natasha frowned, eyebrows drawing together, any sympathy fading away. “Alya…what did you do?”

“The Red Room had the right idea,” the woman said. “Just the wrong execution. The wrong person on top.” Alya gave a small smile. “As such, it has been reborn. I will not abandon those who look up to me as you did. There is always a market for people like us, a niche that can be filled with grown children who otherwise would have been living on the streets, unwanted. I have skills—I paid for them in blood, my own and others’—and skills are meant to be used. Practiced. Passed on.”

“Why would you do that?” Natasha asked. “I know what the Red Room taught us. I know how harsh those lessons were taught. If you hated it—why would you subject a new generation to what we went through?”

“I cannot help who they made me to be,” Alya answered. “I cannot help that I feel nothing when I watch the life leave someone’s eyes through the work of my own hands. I cannot be anything more than what they made me. And neither can you, given your current employment. A hero of New York, really? An _Avenger_. Wait until the oh-so-grateful world finds out what you _actually_ do for S.H.I.E.L.D. You know that you never really leave this business.”

“All right, enough,” Natasha said with another glance at Clint. “I’ve heard your manifesto, Alya. What now? You kill me? You kill someone you think I give a damn about because I never gave one about you?”

“So you admit it.”

“You hear what you want to hear,” Natasha said, making her dismissal clear in every word.

Alya was unswayed. “You were right the first time. Now, I kill you.”

“Then get it over with,” she replied, lifting her head. From where he was strung atop the chair, Clint jerked against the still-slack noose, eyes desperate.

The woman drew her knife, leaning in towards Natasha. “You know that’s not how it works,” she said, and slit her bonds. Alya retreated a few steps, gaze never leaving Natasha’s, and then sent the dagger clattering at her feet. “Pick it up. Face me.”

Natasha shed the cut ropes from her wrists, then untangled the ones around her ankles. “An advancement ceremony? That’s what we’re doing here?”

“You were never the best of us, Natalia. I’m about to prove it.” Another knife appeared in her grip, and with a flick of her hand, it shot across the room, ripping right through Natasha’s shirt before skittering across the floor. Alya smiled, a sinister, mocking thing. “First blood. Madame B would be proud.”

Natasha ignored the drips of her own blood falling to the floor, picking up the knife and testing its weight before slotting it into her palm, blade extended perpendicular to her wrist and away from her body. Alya ran at her, a third knife slashing toward her shoulder, but Natasha was on her feet already. She blocked the movement of Alya’s arm, then followed up with a stab of her own. She slashed through air as Alya dodged, then kicked Natasha’s ankles out from under her. Natasha felt her tailbone strike the floor.

Alya moved with her, knees crashing down at Natasha’s sides as she aimed her knife at her ribs, only to find it blocked, hilt to hilt, with Natasha’s own. Her arm burned with the exertion as they struggled for a few breathless moments, Alya’s knees digging into her and her hand pushing the blade inexorably downward, until Natasha’s left fist connected with her opponent’s throat. Alya fell to the side, coughing, and Natasha used the few precious seconds to scramble to her feet. Freeing Clint, making it two against one, that was the smart play here…

The other woman was on her again before she could even move in his direction, thrusting a series of deadly swipes out in front of her, forcing Natasha back. Her other arm came up, elbow impacting Natasha in the mouth with precision. Alya dropped the knife into her other palm and, a glimmer of triumph in her eyes, went in for the kill.

Natasha drove her knife into Alya’s exposed thigh instead. The woman staggered back, looking down at the dagger incomprehensibly. Natasha’s breaths were ragged, every movement painful from the wound in her side and her bruised tailbone as she waited to see what her opponent would do.

Leg shaking almost like it would give out altogether, Alya looked between the knife in her thigh and Natasha’s empty hands. Somehow, Alya lunged forward. Natasha spat a mouthful of blood in her face, hitting her square in the eyes, before bringing up her right leg and slamming her bare foot directly into Alya’s sternum, throwing her backwards and to the floor near Clint’s chair. Her opponent’s knife clattered out of her hand and Natasha swept it up, clamping Alya’s legs under her own and pointing the blade at her throat.

“He does know everything I’ve done,” Natasha hissed. “And he forgave me anyway, even if people like us don’t deserve it.”

“Is this love, Natalia?” Her pinned adversary’s breaths came hard and fast, though her eyes were bright.

“Yeah. It’s love.” Natasha stabbed downward, only for Alya to wrench her entire body to the side with a horrific popping sound. The knife bounced against the stone floor up and out of Natasha’s hand, deadened from the recoil. Grabbing the backing of the chair Barton was standing on, Alya ripped it away, sending it crashing across the room. The noose snapped taut, Clint’s body immediately going rigid before his legs began to flail outward in a sea of thrashing limbs.

Some small part of her was aware of Alya rolling away, but Natasha’s entire focus narrowed to Clint. A horrible choking sound gurgled out of his mouth as his body swung crazily, feet jerking hopelessly more than a foot above the stone floor. “Clint!” She was on him then, arms wrapping around his thrashing body, trying to hold him up, but he was still choking, dangling on the line.

Natasha looked around wildly for where the knife had gone, finally spotting it a few paces away. She lunged for it, snatching it up and was by Clint’s side again, desperately pulling the knife against the rope suspending him from the ceiling, but it was higher than she could reach easily and moved wildly with every spasm of his body. She tried again, jumping into the air as high as she could and grabbing the upper part of the rope with her free hand. It burned into her flesh as she held on, but at least from here she could—

The knife cut through the rope with a rough shearing sound, and Clint’s body crumpled to the floor, Natasha falling down with him. The impact jarred her knees but her hands sought him immediately, fingers scrabbling at the rope still tied around his neck, pulling it off and over the top of his head. “Clint,” she said again, tilting his jaw so that she could see his eyes. “ _Clint_.”

His eyes met hers for the briefest second before he was taken over by coughs, sitting upright so suddenly that his head knocked against hers. He was doubled over, insensate, but after a few more moments the coughs dwindled into wheezes. “Alya?” he asked, the word setting off a fresh round of spasms.

“I don’t know.” Hooking her shoulder under his arm, Natasha dragged him to his feet. “Let’s get out of here before we find out.”


	34. Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint wants pizza.

_Natasha Romanoff, Black Widow, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., one half of STRIKE Team Delta has emerged._

Past.   
One Year After Budapest.

Clint wanted pizza. Specific pizza. From the “best pizza joint in New York,” although Natasha privately thought that the best pizza in New York was not likely to be found tucked in a dank alleyway and squashed between a Burger King and a Round Table. And of course, the best pizza in New York did not deliver.

So that was how she found herself sloshing through pouring rain out of said pizza shop tussling over the one umbrella between them, which would have been enough for both of them to be safe from the worst of the downpour if Clint hadn’t insisted the large pizza box needed to be protected too.

“Give it here,” Natasha growled, wresting the umbrella away from him. “It is barely above freezing and you’re letting my hair get wet.”

“Yeah but the pizza box,” Clint whined, shoving said item against her so that it too was sheltered. “It’s getting soggy.”

“And you’re getting wet,” Natasha said, rolling her eyes.

“It’s fine, I’m willing to make the sacrifice!”

She pulled him toward her by the collar. “You just got over that cold that you moaned about in bed for _days_.”

He grinned. “Yeah, but you made me soup.”

“Shut up.”

“Special soup. Natasha soup.”

“That sounds like someone ground me up and boiled me into broth,” she grumbled.

He smiled fondly. “Your mind always goes to the darkest place—hey!” He grabbed the pizza box from her, nearly upending it all into the gutter.

“And we can’t just hold it vertically because…?” Natasha sighed, feeling raindrops on her head again.

“Because then all the cheese will stick to the cardboard.”

“Right.” She maneuvered herself so that at least half of her and half of him was sheltered, with the pizza box in the middle. “Fine. This better be some good pizza.” It never was—doughy and alternately too much sauce and too little sauce, depending on who was in the kitchen that day.

“Oh, it will be,” Clint said. They both stopped, having arrived at their bus stop. It was unoccupied, unsurprising given the weather and the fact that this seemed to be one of the few bus stops in the city with no protective overhang. Across the street, a bus was approaching but going the wrong direction. It stopped in front of the bench opposite them, then lurched forward then, a shouted expletive from the driver nearly lost to the wind.

Next to her, Clint was paying attention too now, as evidenced by the way half his precious pizza box was being hit by rain under his slack grip. A small figure was huddled on the bench, their head in their hands, and a yellow lab at their feet. He raised an eyebrow at Natasha, then put the pizza box in her arms before walking swiftly across the four lanes of traffic. She looked both ways before following him, catching up just as he reached the curb on the other side. The figure was female, she could now tell, with dark hair, and the dog was lying flat against the freezing concrete, uncaring of the sheets of rain hitting him.

“Hey,” Clint said, raising his voice to be heard over the storm. “You okay? That’s the only bus that’ll come through here.”

The young woman looked up suddenly, wiping her eyes on the completely soaked sleeve of her sweater. “Not really,” she bit out. Her eyes slid from Clint to Natasha and back again, likely assessing how likely it was she was about to get kidnapped by a random couple on the street. “I just needed a minute…to, uh….figure some stuff out.”

“You got a place to go, kid?” Clint asked. She bit her lip, then shook her head. “Family trouble?”

“I ran away,” she said, almost defensively, then bit her lip as a fresh wave of tears filled her eyes. “I couldn’t live with _him_ anymore. But he found me and he tried to run over…” She looked down at the dog at her feet. “I think he needs surgery,” she whispered. “But I don’t have any money or transportation or—”

“I ran away from home too, when I was younger than you,” Clint told her. “We’re going to help. Right, Natasha?”

She studied the girl, all wet bedraggled hair and the faintest glimmer of hope in her eyes. If they didn’t get her off the streets now, someone else might try. Natasha nodded. “We’ll get a cab.”

“And get the dog to a pet hospital,” Clint added, finally bending down to stroke the animal’s fur as Natasha knew he had been dying to do since the minute he saw him. The dog’s tail wagged feebly before falling back to the ground.

“Thank you,” the girl said. “Thank you so much.”

Natasha stepped towards the edge of the curb and waved a hand at an oncoming taxi, which pulled up next to them. The cabbie waved them inside until he saw the dog at their feet, at which point he placed his hands back on the wheel and prepared to speed away. “Wait!” Clint called. “He’s hurt. We just need to get him to an animal hospital.”

“Sorry, man, can’t have pets in my cab,” the man said.

“I’ll pay you an extra two hundred dollars,” Clint said, pulling out his wallet. “Well, actually I only have forty. Natasha, what do you have?” Sighing, she handed him another sixty.

“One hundred dollars, and he’ll lie on a coat instead of on the seat,” Natasha told the cab driver.

“All right, get in,” the driver assented. Clint began pulling off his coat but Natasha beat him to it, setting her longer one wet side up on the back seat.

“You’re not getting sick again,” she told him. Clint ignored her, moving to gently lift the dog off the concrete and settle him on Natasha’s jacket. The girl climbed in after, squeezing into the middle seat. “The nearest animal hospital, please,” she told the driver once they were all inside. The cab pulled away from the curb, and she looked behind her to watch Clint inspect the dog’s injuries further, running his hands along the dog’s shoulders and sides and murmuring quietly to it.

The animal hospital was only ten minutes away, and Natasha paid the cab driver before they all burst inside, soaked with rain and the dog wrapped up in her jacket. The receptionist leaped up immediately, grabbing them a dog-sized stretcher before informing the veterinarian of their newest patient. Now that the dog had been lifted from its lying position, it was obvious that the half of the dog’s face that had been against the concrete was bloodied, and red was still leaking from his left eye.

“What happened?” the vet asked, a woman in her forties striding out from behind the double doors wearing a white coat and snapping on a pair of latex gloves.

“He was hit by a car,” the girl said.

“He your pet? How long ago was this?”

“No, he’s a stray. I had just found him when it happened. It was probably…forty-five minutes ago?”

“All right, fill out some additional paperwork with the receptionist and then wait here if you want. I’ll do what I can,” the vet said, wheeling the dog away back through the swinging double doors. The receptionist approached them with a clipboard and a pencil. The girl filled it out with shaking hands and Clint stuck his credit card underneath the clip.

“Let’s go sit,” Clint suggested when she handed it back. He looked at the receptionist. “Any idea how long it’ll be?”

“I won’t know until Rachel gets started, but I’ll keep you updated best I can,” she replied.

Clint and Natasha guided the girl over to a set of three chairs in the corner, seating her between them. “Thank you so much,” she said again.

“Don’t worry about it; he looks like a good dog,” Clint told her. “What’s his name?”

“Didn’t get a chance to name him,” she said. “I found him on the street and he looked hungry, so I brought him home. I didn’t even really think about keeping him because I know my dad doesn’t care much for dogs, but he came in while I was finding something to feed him and he just—” She stopped. “On the form I put ‘Lucky,’ because both of us are lucky to have met you guys. He probably would be dead, and I—I don’t know where I’d be. Still at that bus stop, probably.”

“What’s your name?” Clint asked her.

“Kate. What’s yours?”

“I’m Clint, and this is Natasha,” he replied. A momentary ripple of annoyance flowed through her that Clint hadn’t bothered asking her permission before using their real names, but it passed quickly enough with another look at the bedraggled girl in front of her.

“How old are you, Kate?” Natasha asked shrewdly. If she was underage, S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol dictated they call child services, even if this wasn’t a S.H.I.E.L.D. mission.

“Seventeen.”Natasha gave Clint a significant look that was not missed by the girl. “I’m turning eighteen in two days.”

“Close enough,” Clint told her. “It’s nice to meet you, Kate.”

* * *

Kate—Kate Bishop—lived on the Upper East Side for half the year, and the other half in Los Angeles. Her father ran Bishop Publishing, one of the largest publishing companies in New York City, with an offshoot in LA that he also oversaw. She spoke some basic Mandarin courtesy of her father’s tutelage and was homeschooled in everything else by a private tutor, though other than that he had not paid her much attention when she was growing up until the death of her older brother and mother in a car accident, leaving her his only heir to his business. Before her mother and brother’s deaths, she had learned mixed martial arts and other competitive sports only generally patronized by the wealthy and poor carnies in the circus. Her father wasn’t what one could call traditionally abusive—not by people with pasts like Clint and Natasha’s—but he was demanding and controlling. She was 5’5” and a hundred twenty pounds, give or take. She had a weakness for animals and an overly trusting nature regarding random people who offered her help on the street.

All of this Natasha learned over the course of the four hours they sat in the waiting room with her, some of which was provided by Kate herself, some of which Natasha observed, and some of which was obtained through a quick Google search on her phone. The three of them ate most of the pizza while they waited, to the displeasure of the receptionist who threatened to have Clint mop their floors if so much as a drop of pizza sauce was spilled. By the time they got around to it, the pizza was cold, a little wet, and the cheese was stiff, but for once Clint didn’t seem to care.

“Miss Bishop?” the vet called, walking in through the double doors. Kate stood immediately, followed by Clint and Natasha. “Why don’t you three come on back and see him? He’s doing very well post-surgery, but there are some things we should discuss.”

The vet led them to a back room labeled ‘Recovery,’ where the dog lay on a mat lined with blankets. A particularly fluffy one covered most of his body, but from what Natasha could see there was no more trace of blood. Its left eye was covered in a white gauzy patch.

“Lucky will most likely make a full recovery,” the vet told them. “We did have to remove his eye, however, as infection had set in. Other than that, he’s just a bit banged up.”

“Thank you,” Kate said, smiling for the first time since they’d met her.

“I also noticed that he wasn’t microchipped. If you like, I can do that for a $50 surcharge if you plan tokeep him as a pet. If not, the animal shelter will pick up the charge and list him for adoption.”

“Microchip, please,” Kate said immediately, stroking her hand over the dog’s neck. She looked at Clint. “If that’s okay with you?” He nodded.

“All right, then if you can keep him warm and apply this topical antibiotic to his missing eye once every morning and night, I can release him to you now. Normally with strays we keep them an extra few days to get their weight up, but he seems to have done fairly well for himself before he met you. He’ll be a bit groggy for a while, but the anesthetic will wear off fully within a few hours.”

“Who’s a good dopey dog?” Clint murmured, petting Lucky’s head and sounding quite smitten with the mutt himself. Natasha snorted deep in her throat. “Let’s get you out of here.”

They thanked the vet and wrapped up Lucky in Natasha’s coat again, Clint carrying him swaddled like a baby out into the rain. Natasha held the umbrella over him, careful that the eye patch did not get wet. Kate hailed the cab this time, only realizing once they were all inside that she had no idea where to tell the cabbie to go. “Brighton Beach. 7th and Neptune,” Natasha told him.

The drive from Bed-Stuy took thirty-five minutes, during which time she looked out the window at the city lights as they drove. It had still been daylight when she and Clint bought pizza, but after a four-hour canine surgery it was well into the night hours. When the cab cruised close to the correct building, she asked him to pull over and herded their small group out of the car, Kate carrying Lucky this time.

The apartment building looked a bit rundown from the outside, five stories with vaguely peeling paint, but more concerning where the two large men in dark blue tracksuits loitering by the entrance. A flickering greenish light illuminated them, and two nearby streetlights were out of service.

“Uh…now I feel like I’m getting kidnapped,” Kate said, casting a weirded-out look at Clint and Natasha.

“We’re not kidnapping you,” Clint assured her. The men at the building stood up straighter, more alert as they approached. One of them reached behind him for a weapon.

“Is that the Russian mob? It looks like the Russian mob,” Kate said.

“Tracksuit mafia,” Clint said distastefully.

“Don’t call them that,” Natasha admonished with a roll of her eyes.

“Problem, bro?” one of the men asked in a thick Russian accent, towering over Clint. His right hand was hidden behind his back. 

Natasha stepped into the light and lowered her umbrella. “Добрый вечер, _Dmitri_.”

“Kрасный,” he greeted her, setting the crowbar back down against the side of the building. _Red_.

“Uh…what?” Kate whispered to Clint.

“They owe Natasha one,” he said, as Natasha told the man she was here to collect.

“Девушка останется здесь. Она не пострадает.” _The girl stays here. She will not be harmed._

The man’s eyes slid over their small group. “Da. 4B.” He tossed her the key.

“ _Spasibo_ , bro,” Clint said in a purposefully horrible accent as they passed him into the apartment building’s lobby.

“So…this is where you guys live?” Kate asked as they piled into a creaky elevator.

“No, it’s where you live,” Natasha informed her. “It’s rent-controlled, but it’s paid off for the next three years.”

“And owned by the _Russian mob_.”

She shrugged. “Not the bad one.” The elevator doors dinged open, and she led them down the short hallway to 4B, unlocking it. The apartment was one bedroom, furnished with a clean mattress laid directly on the floor and an old green couch next to a coffee table on unbalanced legs in the living room. But the appliances worked. Kate set the dog on the couch and then turned in circles, looking dazed.

“Hey, he’s waking up,” Clint said, running over to pet Lucky. The dog licked his hands enthusiastically. “He already loves me!”

“You have pizza residue on your hands, Clint,” Natasha reminded him.

“Oh. Right. We’ll just have to order more then,” he replied easily, pulling out his phone. At her look he added, “What, he’s hungry! And it’s not like we have any dog food.” He ruffled the dog’s fur. “You want pizza, don’t you, boy? Dontcha?” He grinned at Natasha. “He’s a pizza dog already. I can just tell.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“This…this is too much,” Kate interrupted them, tearing her eyes away from the empty apartment. “Who _are_ you guys?”

“Not important.”

Kate looked skeptical. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch,” Natasha told her. “Visitation rights,” Clint said at the same time, cuddling the dog with the phone trapped between his shoulder and ear. Natasha rolled her eyes.

“You got it,” Kate promised him happily.

“Hi, yes, I’d like to order a large pizza delivered,” Clint said into the phone. “All the meats, please. Yes.” He gave them the address, thanked them again, and hung up. “Pizza’ll be here in twenty minutes! Not the best pizza in New York but it’ll have to do.”

“Thank you so much,” Kate repeated.

“We’ll check in on you from time to time,” Clint told her. “We have to work a lot, but we’ll be around. Happy birthday, Kate.”

“And if you don’t want your father to be able to track you, ditch your phone next chance you get,” Natasha advised her. She set a small wad of cash on the coffee table. “To get you started.”

They stayed another half hour, talking with Kate and giving enough time for the pizza to arrive. The dog ate at least a fourth of it, hand-fed by Clint. When they finally left, it was well past midnight, and Clint smiled dopily at her. “You’re growing soft, Romanoff.”

She scoffed. “Am not.”

“You helped a crying girl and a puppy dog today. _And_ went above and beyond to do it.”

Natasha made a face, then sighed. “Shut up, Barton.”

“I love it when you call me ‘Barton.’ Reminds me of the good old days when I used to be scared you’d murder me in my sleep when we were undercover.”

She punched him in the arm. “You said you trusted me!”

“I did. To do whatever you needed to do to feel safe, even if that was killing me. I trusted you were a survivor.” He glanced back at the building growing less visible through the sheets of rain behind them. “Now she’s a survivor too.”

“Something makes me think she would have survived on her own,” Natasha said. “We just sped it up a little.”

“Okay, well, we saved a one-eyed dog then,” Clint said brightly.

“…Fine. One-eyed dog saved. Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PSA, apparently pizza is NOT a safe food for dogs in the non-Marvel world, as I learned after writing this lol. So, just in case anyone was wondering. 
> 
> This is not the last we'll be seeing of Kate and Lucky ;)


	35. Chapter 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha and Clint go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to Nazezdha321. Happy birthday :)

_Natasha finally discovered Clint’s kidnapper, Alya Naumenka - an old acquaintance from the Red Room. Natasha won, but was faced with a choice: go after Alya or save Clint. Obviously, she chose the latter._

Present.

Natasha wasn’t quite sure how they made it back to the Quinjet, but somehow, they did. The two leaned heavily on each other as they mounted the ramp, staggering and nearly collapsing in a heap of bruised and bloodied limbs before they reached the chairs. “Let’s get up in the air,” Clint said in a raspy voice, and Natasha didn’t argue, falling down into the co-pilot’s seat with a hand pressed over where Alya’s knife had grazed her. The world felt disjointed, and instead of elation at finally having Clint here with her there was only a strange emptiness inside. As for Alya’s revelation…

A new Red Room. A new generation of Widows-in-training, of children forced to learn to fight and survive and kill. One that was all her fault. It was as if she was floating on a pool of water, straining to keep absolutely still, and any movement might make her sink. Her hands moved by rote, adjusting the controls, eyeing Clint’s flightpath, though his grip on the throttle was still iron. It was only once they were safely above the clouds that he leaned back against the headrest.

She caught his attention with a tap to his shoulder, signing, “Let me look at your neck.”

“Let me look at your side,” he countered, but did not complain when she limped to the back of the Quinjet and made him lie on a row of seats. Her fingers probed his jugular, pressing lightly into the mottled flesh, and at her signal he twisted agonizingly over onto his back. Natasha felt the column of his spine, the back of his neck, leaving smears of red wherever she touched. She was no doctor, but she had done enough checks like this on various missions and everything seemed normal.

“Does it hurt to speak?” she signed.

He shrugged, an expression of pain quickly taking over his face at the motion. Opening the medkit, she pressed two muscle relaxants into his hand, and dug through her bag until she found a bottle of water for him to take them with. In that same duffel, she pulled out a backup set of hearing aids, and held them out to him with a questioning look.

“Thanks.” He took the pills and nestled the aid in his ears, where the S.H.I.E.L.D. tech nearly disappeared within the canal. He winced as he turned them on and dialed down the volume.

“Better?” Natasha asked, using her own voice for the first time.

“You know how it is after a long stretch of hearing nothing,” Clint murmured. He stood up from the seats, gesturing at her. “Now you.”

“I want to look at your knees first, they—”

“Natasha, you’re bleeding,” he told her exasperatedly. “Just lie down.”

She sighed, sitting down and lying back slowly until her eyes were staring at the overhead bins and the Quinjet’s ceiling. Natasha felt him lift the hem of the Red Room outfit gingerly, peeling it away from skin that seared with pain. “It’s not too deep,” he told her. “I’m going to stitch you up though.” Her muscles locked as he sprayed it with antiseptic, keeping her body from arching upward and away from him. Then it relaxed, limp as a rag doll, as he began to pull the needle and black surgical thread through her flesh. He was gentle as possible, she could tell, the tugs at her skin only as hard as necessary to get the torn flesh to come together. Clint was always gentle, even when she hadn’t wanted him to be. Those early days when she just wanted him to shoot her or betray her and give her a reason to leave him and his intelligence agency that had not yet won her allegiance far behind. To disappear into the night, beholden to no one, and never look back.

“Nat?” he asked, voice low and concerned. His fingers immediately stilled their work at her side, coming up to touch her face. “You good? I can add some of the numbing solution for the pain but I thought you hated the stuff.” He brushed aside a tear with his thumb, and only then did Natasha realize she was crying.

“It’s not the pain,” she whispered.

“Hey,” he murmured, understanding immediately, smoothing back a matted lock of red hair. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

“You were gone so long,” she said, feeling a fresh wave of tears burn her eyes. “I almost thought—I wouldn’t—”

“You did,” Clint told her, grasping one of her hands with his and holding it tight. “You found me. And we’re going _home_.”

“I burned our apartment,” Natasha admitted ruefully. “I’m sorry, I know much you liked the sightline from that building.”

“I hope you mean revealing its location, rather than with fire,” Clint told her, with an expression approximating stern.

She gave a watery laugh. “Yeah.”

“Well, given that I was kidnapped off that balcony, I’d consider it already burned and the view associated with it tainted by memories of chloroform,” Clint said with a small smile. “So no harm done.”

“Also—also the safehouse in Bucharest.”

“The one with the little mom-and-pop bakery right next door?” he pouted. “Natasha, how dare you burn my favorite safehouse in order to rescue me from a psycho Red Room dropout?”

“All right, all right,” she said, hitting him lightly on the arm. “Let me up.” She rubbed her eyes with her sleeves once she was seated upright on the bench. “I feel stupid. You were the one locked up for six months; I should be comforting you—”

“Seeing you is all the comfort I need,” he promised. “I knew you’d come if you could. I just had to hold out. You had the hard job.” He considered it. “Well, seeing you and Laura and the kids, but—”

“Laura and the kids!” Natasha said, standing bolt upright. “I told Cooper I’d tell him as soon as I had you.”

“Cooper?” Clint asked giving her a quizzical look. “Not Laura?” She made for the phone in her bag but he caught her under the arms, forcing her back into a sitting position. “Hey, don’t pull out your stitches—I wasn’t finished yet.” He rifled through the bag and tossed her the phone. “Here, you text them while I finish patching you up.”

“Cooper missed you,” Natasha said simply. Her fingers began to fly across the small screen’s keyboard, and she barely noticed Clint resuming his ministrations. “I went to the Farm for Christmas because I was injured, and he…he wasn’t happy about it.” Clint pulled the last stitch tight, knotted the string, cut it, and then placed a sterile bandage over the wound. When he looked up, his eyes were sad.

“Well, we’ll be there soon enough,” he said, more to himself than her.

“You sure you’re okay?” Natasha asked, pulling her bloodied shirt back down.

“I’m good, Nat,” he said again. “Naumenka didn’t know how long it would take you to find me, so she couldn’t hurt me too bad. Got pretty lonely there for a while, but mostly they just knocked me out with sleeping gas whenever I tried to put up a fight. Think I got a bit of tolerance to it built up by the end there.”

“That’s why you were able to catch me,” Natasha said.

“Fell down myself soon afterward, but at least I gave you a bit of a cushion,” he said.

She ventured a small smile. “It’s what partners are for.”

“Partners,” he agreed, leaning forward to rest his forehead against hers. She breathed in deep, feeling the world shift back into place, at least a little. When they finally broke apart, they were both grinning, with relief and happiness and a million other things wrapped up into one. “Fourteen hours to home,” Clint said with a glance forward towards the cockpit. “Want to get some rest?”

“What, curl up on blankets on the floor of a Quinjet?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Hey, I haven’t had any human physical contact for six months,” Clint protested, but she was already standing on the seats, throwing as many emergency blankets as she could find from the racks above them down on him.

“I mean, I wasn’t cuddling up to Bobbi every night while searching for you either,” she replied, deadpan, before leaping down onto the floor.

“Bobbi? You were with Bobbi?”

“She helped me search,” Natasha said. “Kept me sane for a bit there. Don’t tell her that though; I have a reputation to uphold.”

“I can’t believe you partner-cheated on me with my ex-wife.”

“I cuddled with Laura too at Christmas while you were gone,” Natasha said, rolling her eyes. She laid down on her side on top one of the blankets, pulling the rest over her. “You mad about that too?”

“In my own house, how could you,” he teased, crawling in with her and laying down on his back. The floor of the Quinjet was hard, but curled up with Clint under three different blankets was far from the worst place she’d ever slept. He was quiet for a moment. “Thank you for taking care of them.”

“Of course,” Natasha said, throwing one arm around his waist and burrowing into his side, head resting on the juncture where his chest met his shoulder. He was warm and solid if a bit rank, but he still smelled like Clint. “They’re family.”

“So what else did you get up to while I was gone?” Clint asked, lifting his legs momentarily so that she could pull her knees up into the fetal position. Once she had, he set them down again, his legs now looped over hers, holding her close. His passed lightly over her back in a steady rhythm.

“Oh, you know, normal mission things,” Natasha said. “Climbed some cliffs, got some broken ribs, threatened Vladimir Putin, talked to a bird, shot Captain America.”

“Wait,” Clint said, arm tightening around her. “Hold up, go back, Romanoff—to his face?”

“Putin or Cap? Or the bird, I guess.”

“Putin.”

“Hell no. He doesn’t want to be in the same room with me. Sent some cop instead; I told Mother Russia to fuck off.”

“What did he want?”

“To claim me as ‘their’ superhero.”

“Always the Captain America complex. Bastard.” Clint shifted. “Did you say you shot Cap?”

“Yes.”

“Did he bleed white and blue as well as red?”

“It was with a Bite,” Natasha shrugged. “Guess I’ll have to try again to find out.”

“Or don’t,” he said. “Just a suggestion.”

“Nah, I think Cap and I have an understanding,” she revealed. “I sort of found his long lost best friend who also happens to be the Winter Soldier, so…”

“The one who…” Clint trailed off. “And shot you in Odessa.”

“Yep. Bucky Barnes. Might’ve discovered a HYDRA re-emergence too, or maybe just a fan club. Jury’s still out. Sitwell and Rumlow are on it though.”

Clint let out a long, low whistle. “You got more done in six months than we ever did. Maybe you _should_ be a solo act, Romanoff.”

She chuffed him in the stomach, the most accessible part of him in this position. “Never again. You’re stuck with me.”

“Good.”

* * *

Natasha didn’t think she’d ever seen Barton so desperate to leave S.H.I.E.L.D. medical before, and she had witnessed some very desperate times. The time they kept him there for a week to test out new ear implants. The time he’d broken his forearm in a weird way and the doctors didn’t trust him to let it set right. The time he’d gotten stabbed in the leg breaking up a fight in the town nearest the Farmhouse while out buying a hot water bottle for a very pregnant Laura, who’d promptly gone into labor with Lila while he was gone.

Well, okay, this was a close second to that last one.

“There may be side effects to long-term exposure to sleeping gas,” the doctor was attempting to explain while Clint looked down at his IV, stubbornly trying to tug it out. She could tell from the way his head was tilted that he had his hearing aids off. “We need you to be on the lookout for some symptoms: insomnia, nosebleeds, dizzy spells, headaches or migraines.”

“You’re going to want to print that out for him,” Natasha said, giving the doctor a smile. Smiles came so easy now.

The doctor glanced between Natasha’s bed and Clint’s. “…Right. I’ll just go do that then.” He bustled off.

Clint successfully pulled the IV needle from his skin and threw it to the side. “Was he saying something?” he asked.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Coulson would have your ass,” she said, trusting his lip-reading skills and not bothering to sign.

“Yeah. Yeah, he would,” Clint said, expression falling. Natasha waited to see if he wanted to talk about it—they hadn’t fully processed their handler’s death by the time he had been kidnapped, not really—but he shook his head. “I hate hospitals.”

“ _We_ hate hospitals.”

He made a face at her. “You made out without an IV this time.”

“Thanks to your top-rate stitching job.” She looked up at the doctor returned with a few stapled pieces of paper.

“Thank you,” Clint said with a sincerity no living person but Natasha would have seen through. “Are we cleared to go now?”

“Yes, with restful activities for both of you for a week,” the doctor said, handing him the sheet. “Just let me remove your…oh, never mind, you’ve done it yourself.”

“I’m an old hand at this,” Clint told him, hopping off the bed. Natasha followed him, wondering if the young, newly-minted S.H.I.E.L.D. doctor had been excited when he first got assigned to patch up STRIKE Team Delta. She and Clint could both be assholes with medical. Syringe and/or hearing-related trauma tended to do that to you.

When they reached their fueled up Quinjet on the landing pad, Nick Fury was waiting for them in the shadowed interior. “Did you think you were leaving without speaking to me?”

“Until you showed up here,” Clint said flippantly, although Natasha watched him surreptitiously turn his hearing aids back on. “All due respect, sir, but I _really_ want to get home.”

Fury’s singular eye softened. “I want a full report by the end of the week, Agent Barton.”

“Yes, sir. Can’t wait to type it all up for you.”

The director of S.H.I.E.L.D. sighed. “I’m sure you can’t.” He walked past them off the ramp of the Quinjet and back onto the roof and waved them away with a flick of his wrist.

“He’s glad to see you,” Natasha told Clint as she settled into the co-pilot’s seat. After so many months of flying on her own, it was nice to watch someone else do it for once.

“He let us go without a full debrief. For Fury, that’s jumping for joy,” he replied deadpan, pulling back the throttle. Natasha felt the hum of the Quinjet beneath her deepen as it rose up into the air, then accelerated toward the western horizon.

It took only three hours of flying at full speed to reach the Farmhouse. From the way he was perched in the seat, Natasha could tell that Clint could barely stand to wait the few extra minutes it took to do the customary three circles around the property before touching down, but the three small figures sprinting out to meet them made it all worth it. They unbuckled as soon as the landing gear had hit the dirt and Natasha hit the button to extend the ramp.

Cooper was first to reach them, barreling full tilt into his father the moment he had made it out of the jet and onto solid ground. Clint hugged him tight, burying his nose in his hair. Lila was second, and he released Cooper to haul her up into the air, swinging her in a half circle before depositing her over his shoulder, her arms looped around his neck. He kissed Laura before sweeping her into a hug too, Cooper wrapping his arms around his middle. Clint was crying and so was Cooper, and Laura’s eyes were a bit misty too. Natasha closed up the back of the Quinjet and then just stood and watched the family be reunited, something warm glowing in her chest.

“Don’t be silly, Nat. Get in here,” Laura ordered, beckoning with one hand. Natasha didn’t hesitate, wrapping her arms around everyone she could reach and feeling them pull her in closer.

Clint was the first to break them apart, cheeks wet. “I’m hungry. How about some chow?” he asked with a watery laugh.

“Mama made grilled cheese,” Lila told him, kicking her legs lightly against his middle.

“Sounds great. Your mama makes the best grilled cheese,” he told her, hefting her further up on his hip and taking Cooper’s hand. He looked back. “Right, Nat?”

She nodded, eyeing the way Laura hung back. “Right. We’ll be right there.” The two of them watched as Clint and Cooper began some sort of skipping competition up to the Farmhouse, Lila laughing wildly as she was jostled around.

Laura hugged her. “Thank you for bringing him home,” she said.

“You never have to thank me for that,” Natasha told her.

“And both of you, you’re all right? Not injured, or ill, or…” Laura stopped. “I just can’t quite believe we made it through this so…unscathed. It feels too good to be true.”

“No more injuries than usual,” Natasha promised her. “He’s really all right.” The other woman took her hand and squeezed it, and they began walking back to the Farmhouse together. Upon arrival, they found Cooper deftly frying some bread and cheese and Lila standing almost threateningly over Clint, who was seated at the table and taking bites of a still-steaming sandwich. Laura took over the frying pan from Cooper and slid another onto a plate for Natasha, who accepted it and sat across from Clint. She blew on it to cool it down and soon enough both the kids were seated too with plates in front of them, squabbling over whose glass of milk was fullest. Laura cut a couple apples and set them down as well before Clint pulled her down into a chair, giving her half his grilled cheese and another kiss.

Everything was right again on the Barton Farm, for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only ten more chapters to go! We're in the endgame now...


	36. Chapter 36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last big secret is revealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is unofficially titled “It’s the Ones Closest to Us (who lie to us best).” Credit to Nazezdha321 for her incredible title-making ability, but unfortunately I’m too lazy to title all my chapters, so it’ll have to remain unofficial ;)

_There was Clint and Natasha before Budapest, and there was Clint and Natasha after Budapest. This is unquestionably after._

Past.

“You’re seriously not going to tell me where we’re going.”

“Nope.”

“Is it to a firing squad?”

“What? Nat, no.”

“I did put a whoopee cushion underneath Fury’s chair before the big council meeting last week. He was very pissed.”

“Yeah, but who got you the cushion?” Clint scoffed.

She side-eyed him. “You’re a bad influence on me.”

“So Coulson tells me, every damn day,” he grinned. “He says we’re the reason he’s gonna die young.”

Natasha snorted. “Young?”

“Before he hits fifty.” They both laughed.

“All right, so, not a firing squad. That we know of.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Want to tell me how _long_ it’s going to take…?”

From the pilot’s seat next to her, Clint rolled his eyes. “So you can use our heading and speed and figure it out yourself?”

“Spoilsport.” Natasha fingered the silvery necklace at her throat, mostly hidden by the collar of the leather jacket she was wearing.

“No, it’s…I just…” The humor slowly faded from Clint’s face. “I will tell you before we get there. I need to. It’s just…not something I’ve told many people before.”

Natasha drew her legs up, twisting in her chair to look at him with concern. “Something to do with your past?” The fields of the Midwest drifted slowly by below them.

“No, the opposite.” He rubbed his face with one hand, looking up at the ceiling and then back at her. “There’s something—a pretty important thing—I haven’t told you yet about me. And I know we have a whole ‘no secrets’ thing going on—”

“Yeah, for a few months now.” She was frowning now, her eyebrows drawn together. Natasha had told him everything, everything she knew of anyway, and that was more than she’d ever told anyone. More than she ever intended to tell anyone again.

“I know. I know. It’s just—it’s important, Nat.”

“That…does not make it better.”

“Right. Well, um…her name is Laura.”

Natasha frowned, uncomprehending. “And she is…?”

“She’s my wife.”

* * *

Clint had a wife. A _wife_. That he never told her about.

Clint had a wife.

Her brain was not entirely functional as Clint angled the Quinjet down towards the ground, doing three loops around a farmhouse that she didn’t have the wherewithal to ask him about at the moment before setting the plane down gently on the grass.

A wife.

“Natasha,” he said quietly, and her eyes snapped to him. Her breathing was shallow. “Are you ready?”

She nodded numbly, slipping out of her chair after him as he made his way to the back of the Quinjet and let down the ramp. The afternoon sun beat down on her as soon as she stepped into its light, the baked earth warm beneath her feet. Clint held out a hand and she took it, allowing him to lead her toward the house several hundred yards away. A red-painted wooden barn stood off to the side, and past that fencing inside which dots of animals roamed.

The house took the entirety of her focus as they approached—a well-kept white, two stories and probably a large attic due to the angle of the roof, with planters outside the first floor windows and a large porch. She could see Clint in the details, the woodwork, the colors of the curtains, and there was no doubt in her mind this was his home.

His hand was warm and steady in hers as they mounted the porch steps, and he gave it a final squeeze before letting go, bringing his knuckles up to knock on the door. It opened after scarcely a moment, the woman on the other side of it breaking into a smile at the sight of them. “Clint,” she said, stepping past the threshold and enveloping him in an embrace he clearly welcomed. Natasha watched the way his eyes closed as his nose was buried in her auburn hair, hugging her back. The woman—Laura—released him, then turned to face her. “You must be Natasha.” Natasha nodded, not quite trusting herself to speak. Laura’s hand was calloused like Clint’s when she shook it, though they were not an archer’s callouses. “Please, come in.”

“After you,” Clint said, giving her a nod to follow Laura. She did, stepping into a house that smelled of baking and flowers and fresh linens. Laura led them to a dining table already laden with a bowl of guacamole and a half-full family-size bag of tortilla chips.

“You made guac,” Clint said with a grin. “You’re the best, Laura.” They kissed, a quick peck on the lips that was over before Natasha could really register that it happened. It was so…routine. Natural.

How was this possible? As partners, they spent nearly all of their free and unfree time together—pizza, movies, visiting Kate. Sure, he went away on missions by himself sometimes, and occasionally off on his own, but—how? How many lies had he told her over the course of this partnership, to get away when he was really coming to see—?

His _wife_.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time,” Laura was saying, and with a jolt Natasha realized she was speaking to her. “I’ve heard a lot from Clint, and I wanted to thank you.”

“Thank me?”

“For making sure he comes home safe,” she said, eyes soft and sincere. “He never would have made it back from Budapest or who knows how many other close calls he _hasn’t_ told me about without you.” She shot a teasing look at Clint.

“Hey, I don’t remember any ‘close calls’ in Budapest,” Clint said. “Unless you mean Nat’s driving.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, almost forgetting Laura was there for a moment. “That’s ‘cause you don’t _remember_ most of Budapest.”

“Because of the concussion I got. Due to your driving.”

Natasha rolled her eyes, only to find Laura staring at them both, smiling, and immediately felt self-conscious. “I’m glad the two of you are partners,” the woman said. “It’s good to know someone has his back out there.”

“I do,” Natasha said, for lack of anything else to say, “have his back.”

Laura’s eyes fell lower, to her collarbone. “Oh! You’re wearing it.” Natasha looked down at the small silver arrow at the base of her throat, suddenly defensive. Clint had given that to her. Clint and his snarky grin and his nose in her file where it hadn’t belonged and his fingers ghosting across the back of her neck to put it on her where she hadn’t been touched since Ivan, except she hadn’t felt _unsafe_ with him.

_“I don’t celebrate birthdays, Barton,” she told him curtly, turning to head out of his apartment and back to her own._

_“You_ didn’t _celebrate birthdays,” he replied. “Now you do. Come on, Nat, one tiny present won’t kill you.”_

Was that a problem?

“I helped pick it out,” Laura said happily. “Told him it wasn’t too sappy for an ex-Russian assassin to wear.”

Her fingers closed around the tiny arrow. “You’re right. It’s not.” There was a _thump_ from upstairs and Natasha tensed, hand going to where her gun was normally belted at her side, only to feel empty air. Clint’s insistence. Right.

“I’ll go,” Laura said, drifting away from them unperturbed.

Natasha looked at Clint, whose blue eyes were wide and apologetic. “There’s one more thing I need to tell you.”

“Clint…”

“His name’s Cooper.”

Natasha stared at him for a full thirty seconds, then turned to see Laura coming down the stairs again, a small child on her hip. “He woke up from his nap,” Laura said, pressing a kiss to the top of the squirming toddler’s head.

“Daddy!” As soon as Clint was spotted, the child was reaching for him, legs kicking to be released and arms outstretched. Laura laughed and handed him over, Clint scooping him up and tossing him upwards a little before hugging the small body to his chest. Giggles rent the air. “Daddy, you’re home.”

“Yes, I am, buddy, and I brought someone new for you to meet,” Clint told his son— _his son_ —turning so that the boy could see her. “This is Natasha. She’s a friend from work.”

“Hi Natasha,” the boy said slowly, forming his mouth around the unfamiliar word.

Unsure of what to do and getting zero help from Clint, Natasha held out her hand. “Hi, Cooper,” she said. His little fingers closed around just one of hers, but he managed to shake her entire hand up and down enthusiastically. With a jolt, Natasha remembered to smile, mouth widening mechanically though she was sure she was still giving Clint a deer-in-the-headlights look.

She was a master spy, goddamnit, she could meet a small child and not have a breakdown.

Clint’s small child.

“Okay, buddy, how do you feel about guac?” Clint said, wisely sweeping Cooper away from Natasha again, facing him toward the table. “It’s a gross green color, I know, buuuuut it’s pretty yummy.”

“Prove,” Cooper said, hitting Clint on the mouth with a tiny fist.

“So that’s how it’s gonna be, huh?” he asked, shifting the child higher on his hip so he could grab a chip with his free hand. He loaded it up with guac, then took a bite. “Some for Daddy. Some for Cooper.”

The child obediently tried the chip, before spitting it out and making a face. “It gross, Daddy!”

“You have no taste,” Clint informed him, shaking his head and setting him on the ground. He glanced at Natasha, then looked at Laura. “Okay, fine, Mama’s gonna get you cleaned up and make you something else to eat,” he told the boy. “No more icky green stuff for you, all right?”

“Yeah!”

Laura gave him a look, putting her hands on her son’s shoulders and steering him toward the sink. “Clint, you’re going to make him hate all green foods,” she sighed. “Green like _vegetables_.”

“Oops,” Clint offered. He glanced at Natasha again. “You mind taking him for a bit? I think Nat and I need to take a drive.” Laura nodded before turning her back to them and hefting up Cooper close enough to the edge of the sink that she could wash the spit-out avocado from his chin. “Come on,” Clint said to her, guiding her out the front door again. They walked in silence, her a step behind him, into the barn she had seen before and coming to a stop next to a brown John Deere tractor. “Hop on,” Clint said.

“We’re gonna drive in a tractor? Who _are_ you,” Natasha said, quietly but with the teasing clear in her voice.

“Shut up,” he told her with a quirk of his lips.

She didn’t move, surveying the vehicle. “I…don’t know how.”

Clint smiled. “The worldly Natasha Romanoff has never ridden a tractor?”

“My marks are usually city slickers.” His lips twitched at her choice of words, but he patted the back part of the black leather seat. She lifted one leg and slid on, and Clint tucked himself in front of her, scooting back until he wasn’t falling off the front of the seat. His back pressed up against her, and she sighed before putting her arms around his middle to hold on. “Something makes me think this thing wasn’t meant to sit two.”

“Not really, no,” he replied, starting it up.

“This is horribly fuel inefficient,” she said.

“What?” Clint yelled over the monstrous rumble of the tractor.

“THIS IS HORRIBLY FUEL INEFFICIENT,” Natasha shouted in his ear.

“We won’t go far,” he replied, turning his head so she could hear him. The tractor jerked forward, Clint guiding it expertly out of the barn, then sent it ambling down a narrow lane between the animal pens and what she was now realizing was a large vegetable garden, rather than the stereotypical rows and rows of corn. The traditional type of farming would be too much for just one person to manage with Clint gone so often, especially with a toddler in tow, and with his S.H.I.E.L.D. salary they wouldn’t need much of an additional income. The tractor continued onward after the last of the vegetables ended, bumping over the dirt path and sending the smell of diesel and dust into Natasha’s nose. Once the farmhouse had faded into the distance behind them and there was only untouched green hills in front, the sun dipping just below the crest of the tallest one, Clint slowed the tractor to a stop and shut it off. In the absence of the machine’s roar, the silence seemed almost deafening despite the whisper of the wind through the grasses. Clint shifted them until they were sitting hip-to-hip off the side of the tractor.

“Where are we?” Natasha decided on.

“Missouri.” She nodded, filing away that piece of information for later. “I’m sorry for springing them on you. I know it’s…a lot to take in.”

She kept her eyes facing away from him, toward the sun and hills. “Why now? You said you trusted me before. A year ago, even. Why now?” She hoped he could hear the question she wasn’t asking. _Was that a lie? Was all of it a lie?_

“Because Laura’s pregnant,” Clint said. Natasha twisted to look at him, eyebrows drawn together in surprise and alarm. “And we want you to be godmother.”

“ _What?_ ” Natasha shook her head. “No. Clint, no.”

“Nat—”

She was still staring at him, open-mouthed. “Laura—she’s never met me before today, and you both want me to—?”

“Yes.”

“No, Clint… I’m not religious,” Natasha said. “I’m not stable enough, or available enough, or—”

“Trustworthy enough?” he asked. His words stopped her in her tracks, because despite everything, _yes_ , that too.

“I’m not good with kids,” she said finally, carefully, needing him to understand. “They take that out of you at the Red Room—all the other girls there are just…you can’t care, and if you don’t learn that lesson fast enough, it’ll destroy you.”

“You didn’t learn that lesson, Nat,” Clint said softly. “Not as well as they wanted you to. Think about the stories you’ve told me: Elena, Marina... They tried to take that away from you but they never could.”

She met his eyes. “I killed them…or I got them killed.”

“No one’s controlling you anymore. It’s not going to end that way this time.” He sounded so _sure_ , and she wanted to believe him.

Natasha stared at the sun, and the grass, and the hills and the trees. When she turned back to him, it was solemn and weighted. “I promise it won’t.”

* * *

Night had fallen at the Barton Farmhouse, but Natasha still sat at the kitchen table, the plates long since cleared away and the lamps lit, casting a warm glow about the house. “Come here, you little rascal,” Clint told his son, chasing him around the couch. Cooper’s chubby toddler legs couldn’t take him that fast, but Clint remained behind anyway. She watched as the two of them made second loop around, Clint finally scooping up the boy as he attempted to make it a third. Cooper shrieked, all high-pitched toddler laughter.

“Give him a bath,” Laura called to him from where she was finishing the washing-up at the sink. Clint had cooked, Natasha had helped—she had offered to help with the dishes too, but had been waved off.

“You heard Mama,” Clint said, swinging the boy in front of him as he went for the stairs. At the base of them, he looked back. “Want to come, Nat? We’ve got rubber ducks.”

“I’m good here,” Natasha said, giving him a small nod to let him know that she’d recognized the out for what it was. He disappeared up the stairs, and Laura dried her hands on a towel. Natasha considered it, then decided a bit of camaraderie wouldn’t go amiss. “Are rubber ducks supposed to be an incentive?”

Laura laughed. “For Clint, it would be.” She pulled up a chair at the table across from Natasha, who kept her expression schooled even as her insides tightened. “All right if we talk?”

“Talk about what?” The second it was out, Natasha wished she hadn’t said something so brusque, but Laura didn’t seem phased.

“I know you have questions,” Clint’s wife replied. “I would if I were you.”

Natasha thought about it, finally deciding that, “How’d you meet?” was the most appropriate of the questions that burned through her.

Laura’s eyes twinkled. “Classified.” Then she grinned at Natasha’s expression. “I’m kidding. I was walking a friend’s dog up the road from where I lived at the time, and he ran over to me asking if he could pet him. He tripped over the curb and fell flat on his face.”

It was Natasha’s turn to smile. “That sounds like Clint.”

“He let me patch him up. And he got to pet the puppy. Clint likes to say it was love at first sight—between him and the dog.”

“And this was…”

“Five years ago, now. A bit after that, he signed on with S.H.I.E.L.D., and he negotiated this farm out of Fury.”

“So you met when he was still a criminal,” Natasha raised an eyebrow.

“I was an Army brat, what can I say? I liked the bad boys.” Laura shrugged. “Or the idea of them, anyway. Got me into a bit of trouble when I was a teenager and the boys I chose didn’t end up having hearts of gold.”

“Bad boy with a heart of gold,” Natasha repeated. She jerked her head toward the stairs. “How’d you end up with that dumbass?”

Laura smiled again. “I like you, Natasha. I knew I would, from what Clint told me, but…”

Gray-green eyes met warm brown ones. “Clint said you were pregnant.”

She dipped her head. “He talked to you about being godmother, then?”

“You don’t even know me.”

“I know enough,” Laura said. “And I’m only four months along. By the time the baby comes, I’ll know even more.”

“I just—I don’t know _why_ ,” Natasha said, resting her chin on her hands. “All of this is…unexpected.”

“Are you mad at him?” Laura asked, surprising her with the question.

“No. But it doesn’t make rethinking the last few years together any easier.” At her raised eyebrow, she added, “Looking for the signs. The times he wasn’t accounted for. The missions that probably didn’t exist. The phone calls, or texts, or…” She stopped. “I was raised to be a spy. And I didn’t see this.”

“It’s often hardest to see the truth about those closest to us.”

“Then I shouldn’t have gotten close.”

Laura looked at her. “Is that really how you feel?”

Natasha stared at the hardwood table, the grain of it. Oak, maybe, or maple. “I’ve kissed him, you know.”

“Oh, I know.” Natasha looked up. “Prague, 2004. One in the safehouse, one at the gala. Santiago, a couple months later. Dhaka. Karachi. Baoding, to distract the old man with the noodle cart. Rio. And significantly more than that in Yekaterinburg.” Laura looked slightly amused at the expression on Natasha’s face.

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

“Missions are missions, Natasha. I understand that.”

“Not all of those were for a mission, exactly,” she said.

“Prague?” Laura asked. She nodded. “I’m not a jealous person, Natasha. I know who Clint is, the type of man he is, and I trust him. Unless it’s a problem for you?”

_I think I love him_. “I care about him,” she said, truthful as she could be with her mouth’s utter refusal to form that word. _Love is for children, Natalia._ “But not in that… It’s different. He’s my partner.”

Clint’s wife smiled. “I’m not here to stand in your way.” Reaching across the table, she slowly took Natasha’s hands into hers, giving her enough time to pull away if she wanted. “There are things you do for Clint that I can’t give him. I know that. The things the two of you see out there, that he doesn’t want to bring home with him—it’s good that he has you. And that you have him.” Laura’s hands squeezed hers. “You’re important to him, and I’d like you to be family, Nat.”


	37. Chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha and Clint make plans to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Barton fam feels and more angst and hurt/comfort :) Hope you enjoy!

_Natasha and Clint returned to the Farmhouse and reunited with Laura, Cooper, and Lila._

Present _._

“It’s not over,” Natasha said. “You know it’s not. She’s alive. That leg wound was barely bleeding. She’s smart enough to have left it in, gotten to a medical facility before—”

“I know,” Clint said quietly.

“Her plan didn’t make much sense, either.” Her hands twisted together. “Why have you there? Why strung up? Why—”

“Nat, you’re breaking the cardinal rule,” he said. She met his eyes, something cold settling into the pit of her stomach. _Love is for children. Do not get attached._ “Don’t argue with crazy.”

She blinked, then shook her head. “I know. _I know_.”

“Alya’s a true believer. A twisted one. That’s all there is to it. You didn’t end up like her, and that’s because—”

“Because of you.”

He tapped her chest, right over her heart. “Because of _you_.”

Her hand closed over his, gently moving it away. “Still. My past, my responsibility.”

“I just think you need to consider it,” Clint said softly.

“Yeah, all right, I’ll factor them in,” Natasha replied, worrying her lower lip between her teeth and ignoring how widely Clint smiled at those words. “Okay, what about—”

There was a knock at the door to Natasha’s bedroom, which swung in slightly from its closed but not latched position. “There you two are,” Laura said. “I was going to say the grill’s ready, Clint.” She tilted her head. “Am I interrupting something?”

“No,” Clint assured her. “We weren’t trying to keep it from you, we just wanted to iron out some details first.”

She studied their faces, then closed the door behind her with a _click._ “What’s up?”

Natasha took a steadying breath. “The woman who took Clint escaped, as you know.” Her voice was calm, calm as she could make it. “Normally, that wouldn’t be much of an issue—S.H.I.E.L.D. would track her down. We might even be sent to eliminate her.” Her mouth closed. “But based on what she said, she’s recreating the Red Room. Starting up her own. We didn’t see the kids but it sounded like they were already… _enrolled_ ,” she finished, for lack of a better word. “You know I can’t let that happen.”

“And I want to help take it down,” Clint said.

A slew of emotions crossed Laura’s face before it finally settled into acceptance, a part of Laura for which Natasha was eternally grateful. “When?”

“End of the week,” Clint offered. “Leaving Thursday, raiding Saturday. We wanted to wait until we were both healed up.”

A faint smile tugged at the corner of Laura’s mouth. “Bit smarter than the two of you normally are, I’ll give you that.”

“It’s not going to be like before,” Natasha told her. “We’ll be back by Tuesday, max. And neither of us will be alone.”

“Well, of course not,” Clint’s wife said. “You’ll have each other.”

He looked at Natasha for confirmation, and she dipped her head. “And the Avengers.”

Laura’s eyebrows flew upward. “I know how private you are about your past, Nat. You trust them that much?”

“They don’t need to know everything,” Natasha said with a shrug of her shoulders. “I haven’t discussed it with any of them yet. But given that it’s partially a mission to rescue children, I don’t think any of them will take much convincing.”

Laura was quiet, still gazing at Natasha with a rare unreadable expression on her kind face. “We’ll come home,” Clint promised her.

She shook herself. “I know you will. When are you going to tell the kids?”

“Dinner?”

Laura nodded. “It’ll give them another three days with you to get used to the idea before you have to leave.”

“Do you think it’s too soon?” Clint asked, the look in his eyes betraying the depth of his concern.

Laura sighed, resting both her hands on his shoulders. “I think the kids and I will have to face the fact that you’re going to leave again for missions at some point, and it may as well be now. And I think you’re too good of a man to waste your skills on a farm when you could be making the world a better place, and too good of a partner to let Natasha do it alone.”

“I don’t deserve you, Laura,” Clint whispered.

She tilted his head up and kissed him softly. “Of course you do, birdbrain. Now, back to the grill, before we waste too much propane?”

* * *

Natasha was awoken by a hoarse scream in the night. She sat bolt upright, grasping under her pillow for a gun that wasn’t there before leaning over to the nightstand to unlock the safe she kept it in. She pointed it outward with one hand as her eyes swept the room, but everything was calm and dark. The clock glowed green, reading 3:06 AM.

The pitter-patter of small feet sounded in the hallway outside, and Natasha swung her legs out of bed and made for the door, the carpet soft between her toes. Opening it, she caught hold of Lila who was wandering past, rubbing her eyes. The scream, more of a shout this time, sounded again, and Natasha identified the voice. Clint.

Lila whimpered, hands clutching at the hem of the large shirt Natasha slept in. Down the hall, Cooper appeared out of his door, looking likewise awakened. “Wait here, okay?” she said to both of them, before setting the gun back in the safe and walking quietly down the hall to Clint and Laura’s bedroom door. She knocked softly before letting herself in. The lamp by Laura’s bedside was lit and Clint was awake now, sitting up in bed with his head in his hands as his wife stroked his hair and the nape of his neck.

“Nightmare?” Natasha signed to Laura, her heartbeat slowly calming. She nodded. “I’ll put the kids back to bed.” She closed the door again on the woman’s mouthed ‘thank you’ and returned to where Cooper and Lila were standing in the middle of the hall.

“Is Daddy okay?” Lila asked, looking up at her.

“Yeah,” Natasha promised, squatting down to her level. “He just had a bad dream. Your mom’s taking good care of him right now, so we can all just go back to bed. Okay?”

“I d’nno if I can sleep,” Lila said, a giant yawn nearly splitting her head open.

“Well, we’ll just put Cooper back to bed first then,” Natasha said, taking the boy’s hand. She led him back to his door and tucked him back into bed, with Lila trailing behind.

“Thanks, Auntie Nat,” Cooper mumbled before rolling over and shutting his eyes.

She slipped quietly back outside the room and closed the door before looking down at Lila again. “Your turn.”

“Can I have some water?” Lila asked. Never one to deny her anything, Natasha nodded and hefted her up on her hip, walking down the stairs to the kitchen. She filled one of the kids’ cups at the sink, then set Lila down so she could drink it. Once she had been watered, Natasha led her back up the stairs again by the hand this time. She helped Lila back into bed, pulling the covers up and over her small body and tucking them in around her.

“I can’t sleep,” Lila insisted again, rubbing one eye with her fist.

Natasha stroked her hair. “Maybe just try, _malyutka_ ,” she murmured. “Close your eyes.”

“Don’t want to,” the girl sniffled. She looked up at Natasha and tugged the blankets up to her chin. “You and Dad are still gonna be here when I wake up, right?”

“Yes, of course. We’re not leaving until Thursday,” she reminded her. “Try not to worry about that, if you can.”

“It’s hard,” Lila whimpered.

“I know.”

“Can you get Mama?” Lila asked. She started crying, gulping sobs that made her voice go higher. “I want Mama.”

Natasha kissed her forehead. “All right, I’ll get her.” She left the room and padded down the hallway back to Clint’s, knocking before pushing the door open. They were in much the same position as before, with Laura running her palm in even strokes down Clint’s back while he stared down, clenching a fistful of blankets with each hand. “Lila wants you,” she told Laura. “Cooper went down easy but she started crying.”

Laura nodded, and the two of them switched places with the ease of years of experience—Laura slipping out the door to comfort her daughter and Natasha taking the seat at Clint’s side. He did not gave any outward indication he noticed the change, but she was well aware of his level of observance even in this state. She tapped his knuckles once with the tips of her fingers, then began to pry the blankets out of his death grip. When he finally released them, she held his hand gently in hers, circling the back of his hand with her thumb in random patterns. He would recognize the routine, eventually—Clint had come up with it, after all, and used it much more on Natasha than she had on him, back in the days when her programming still sat dark and heavy on her mind.

She kept at it, fingers moving in firm, practiced movements, giving him a sensory grounding anchor in the same way Laura had. His labored breathing had slowed considerably by the time Laura’s footsteps could be heard again in the hallway, and he looked up when she entered, eyes still haunted but remarkably less clouded than before. He reached for her with his free hand, pulling her close to him.

“What was it?” Laura asked gently, sitting down on his other side.

“Just a stupid dream,” he grunted. “That I got captured again, when we got back to the compound. That she did something so I could never go home.”

Laura nodded matter-of-factly. “Not going to happen. Nothing could keep you away from us forever, Clint.”

He raised his eyes. “Death could.”

She sighed, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “You’re too stubborn for that.”

Guilt pricked at Natasha’s insides. “If you don’t want to go…” she said haltingly.

“No,” Clint said, perhaps more harshly than he intended. “You’re not going in alone; I’m your partner.” He laid back down, movements too stiff to be natural. Natasha’s hand, still wrapped around his, went with him. He didn’t seem to want to let go. “It was just a stupid dream. Let’s go back to sleep.”

“All right,” Natasha stood from the bed, then tried and failed to remove her fingers from Clint’s grasp short of wrenching them out of his grip.

“Just sleep here, Nat, there’s more than enough room and only a few hours ’til dawn anyways,” Laura murmured, laying down and pulling the covers over both herself and Clint. Her bedroom was only a few feet away, but Natasha did not argue, slipping under the mass of blankets herself and inhaling deeply. Unlike the last time she had slept here, Clint’s scent was strong and permeated every fiber of the bed, mixing with Laura’s and creating something uniquely their own.

Natasha burrowed deeper. It smelled like home.

* * *

The first thing Natasha noticed when she entered the apartment was the Winter Soldier, decidedly not restrained, seated at her kitchen table. Her hand immediately went to the gun strapped to her thigh, and behind her, Clint grabbed his bow off his back and flicked it to extend the limbs. “Whoa, stand down,” said Cap to their immediate left, standing at the stove over a boiling pot.

Natasha slid her gun back into its holster. “What’s he doing out here?”

“I’m making tea,” Steve replied.

“That’s…not an answer,” Clint told him, grip still tight around his bow.

She raised an eyebrow. “Deprogramming going that well?”

“It wasn’t good for him,” Steve said, not quite meeting her eyes as he carefully carried two mugs of hot liquid to the table. He placed one in front of Bucky, who wrapped his hands around it, and one in front of the empty chair next to him. “Being chained up in the bathroom, I mean. Too much like what they did.”

“I’m okay, Natalia,” Bucky said, and she felt Clint stiffen next to her at the name. Right, she’d forgotten to mention that little tidbit. “If I feel it coming on…I can get someplace safe.”

“Fine,” she said. “Where are the doctors?”

“Not here yet. Usually come around ten.” Steve looked past her. “It’s good to see you again, Agent Barton.”

Clint glanced at her, then collapsed the bow again and let it attach to the back of his uniform again. “Hey.”

“How would you feel about suiting up?” Natasha asked him bluntly.

“Like…for a mission?” Cap asked. She nodded. “I—what’s the target?”

“The woman who had Clint, she’s started up a Red Room again. I want to take it down.”

Steve sat down with a heavy thump. “Oh.” He looked at Bucky. “Right, of course we’ll help.”

Natasha frowned, and the Soldier’s pale blue gaze shifted from her to Steve. “Steve, she doesn’t mean me.”

“The Avengers,” Natasha clarified. “Any of them that will come.” She paused. “S.H.I.E.L.D. would never clear you, James, not so soon. Even if I thought it was a good idea…”

“It’s not.” Bucky lifted his head. “I’m gonna go, and let you guys hash this out. But, um…make them bleed for me, okay? Not that I need more blood on my hands, but…they’d be the first since the Nazis that I honestly wouldn’t mind.” He stood from the table, metal hand still holding the cup of tea, and then retreated down the hall toward the second bedroom that she supposed he and Steve had been using this whole time. Clint followed.

“We have to start trusting him at some point, Natasha,” Steve said. “That means letting him out, not keeping him in a cage. He needs to go out and figure the world out again. Like I did, after Fury defrosted me.”

“Except no one brainwashed you into being a trained killer,” she pointed out. 

Cap sighed. “I know you’ll warn me that because he was my best friend maybe I’m just trying too hard to see the good in him, but I believe we have made progress. The conditioning hasn’t resurfaced in almost a week; he’s stable as can be expected. Plus, he was living in Bucharest for months without having an incident…”

“But also no contact with triggering subjects—no you, no me, no S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she countered. “What are you going to do, stick a note on his back that says ‘If lost please return to Steve Rogers’ and let him loose in New York City?”

“No, but we could use him,” Steve said. “All hands on deck. He helped us get to here, Natasha. He can help some more, and it would be good for him.”

“I’m sorry, Steve, it’s just not a good idea,” she said. “Even if the deprogramming is going well, there are likely hundreds of tiny triggers in his mind. Traps waiting to be sprung. We can’t just will those away, and bringing him will just make us have to watch our backs doubly hard and put everyone in danger.” Her voice softened. “He’ll be here for you to continue working with when you get back.”

“I know,” he said. “I just have that feeling, like…if I let him out of my sight again, he’ll disappear. I’m not ready to lose him again.”

“I’ll bring in some S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to assassin-sit,” she promised, pulling out her phone to call it in. “Undercover.” She thought about it a second. “You’ll like one of them.”

He gave her a weird look. “Why would I…?”

“Her name’s Agent 13. Sharon Carter.”

His eyebrows flew upward. “Carter. As in—”

“Her niece. She prefers Agent 13 so no one makes the connection though,” Natasha said, already typing out a text. “Peggy Carter is kind of a S.H.I.E.L.D. legend as its founder and first director, so she doesn’t want anyone to think she got special treatment.”

Steve still looked vaguely amazed as Natasha finished sending the message and looked up. “Is she good?”

She smiled. “You don’t get assigned a number unless you are.” She looked down the hallway and called, “Clint!” Steve sighed. “Are you coming, Rogers, or not?”

“Of course, Natasha.”

“Then you should say goodbye now, if you want a ride,” Natasha told him as Clint joined them. “Next stop, Stark Tower. I’ve asked them to meet us there.”


	38. Chapter 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lila is coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhh I love this chapter and hope you guys do too <3

_Clint introduced Natasha to Laura and Cooper._

Past.

“Gimme!” Cooper’s fat little fist waved in Natasha’s direction, reaching for the block in her hand.

“What do we say when we want something?” Clint called absentmindedly from where he stood over the stove, frying something on a pan.

“P’ease.” Natasha smiled, handing over the block and watching as he added it to the top of his tower, which leaned heavily to the left but amazingly stayed upright. Colorful letters were carved on the sides of the blocks, but still meant little to Cooper—unless he meant the tower to spell out ‘ZUPAFRISN,’ or alternately ‘NSIRFAPUZ,’ in which case he was doing a great job.

Natasha had never been great at connecting with children. But for Cooper, and soon baby Lila, she was damn well going to try.

Her phone buzzed on the coffee table next to them, and the boy was immediately distracted, making grabby hands at the bright screen. Natasha picked it up, gazing down at the caller ID. _Laura Barton - Cell._ That was…odd, to say the least. Laura had gone outside just half an hour ago to feed the chickens.

“What’s up?” she answered it, holding the phone to her ear and handing Cooper another block to distract him.

“Could you come out to the barn, please?” Laura said.

“…Sure,” Natasha replied, hearing the line go dead.

“Who was that?” Clint asked from the kitchen. “We told S.H.I.E.L.D. to eff off for few weeks, so—”

“Uh, it was Laura,” she said, still more confused than concerned.

“WHAt?” Clint was away from the stove and at the screen door to the yard in seconds, spatula clattering to the floor behind him. Natasha scooped up Cooper before the boy could protest, following Clint. “Honey? Honey, are you okay?” He burst through the open door to the barn at a full sprint, Natasha and Cooper only a few steps behind.

Inside the dusty barn, a very pregnant Laura glared at them both.

“Are you okay?” Clint asked her. “Are you in labor? Do we need to go to the hospital?”

Dead-eyed, and with her hands on her hips, “I got a back cramp and dropped my keys…and now I can’t reach them to pick them up.” Natasha’s eyes fell to the keys on the ground below Laura’s pregnant belly, and Clint started laughing. Laura’s look grew murderous, but even Natasha was trying and failing not to smile.

Catching sight of his wife’s face, Clint too attempted to calm himself, choking back chortles. “Babe…”

Laura turned her glare on Natasha, voice full of indignation. “This is why I called _you_ , Nat.”

“Sorry, sorry,” she said, setting a squirming Cooper on the ground. She knelt down to his level. “Hey, Coop, you wanna grab your mama’s keys for her?” She pointed them out. “And give her a hug too.” Natasha gave him a little push forward, and the boy ran over and picked up the keys off the ground, holding them up to his mother with an angelic smile.

“Here, Mama.” Laura took the keys and Cooper hugged her around the knees, the only place he could really reach.

“This is manipulation,” Laura mouthed at her.

“Is it working?” Natasha smirked.

“Come on, let’s go back inside, lunch is almost ready,” Clint said, more in control of himself now. He picked up Cooper and offered him to Laura, who settled him on her baby bump with his arms around her neck with practiced ease. The four of them trooped back to the house, Clint returning to the stove and dishing up pressed caprese sandwiches and a grilled cheese for Cooper. Clint and Laura sat at the table while Cooper, more interested in his toys than the food at the moment, wandered back to his blocks and Natasha settled in to watch him.

“You still cramping?” Clint asked Laura at the table.

“I’m thirty-eight weeks, Clint; I’m always cramping,” she muttered.

“But you still do farm chores like a badass,” he tried to cheer her up.

“The chickens like it better when I feed them.”

“What? They do not.” Clint gave her a wounded look. “The chickens love me.”

“Mm,” Laura said noncommittally, taking another bite of sandwich. “Now, if you’d gotten me that hot water bottle I asked for last time we were in town, maybe I could still be moving the horses’ hay bales too.”

“You gotta let me do _something_ ,” Clint pouted. “I have to prove I’m a badass too somehow, or Nat won’t believe me.” He took another bite of sandwich.

“Clint, you know I love you,” Laura said in a long-suffering tone, “but if you chew your food that loudly one more time I will end you.”

“Right, the chewing, sorry,” Clint said, turning his face to wink back at Natasha. “Tell you what, I’l just take this to go and head into town real fast and get you that hot water bottle. Sound good?”

“That would be a godsend,” Laura told him, kissing him on the lips before falling heavily back into her chair. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” Clint gazed at her for a few seconds before grabbing the sandwich and the car keys off the hook near the door. “Be back in forty, tops.”

“We’ll be here,” Natasha said, subtly adjusting Cooper’s block tower so it didn’t crash to the ground. The door shut behind him and Laura got up from the table, placing their dishes in the sink.

“Hungry,” Cooper declared, and Natasha handed him his grilled cheese.

“I’ll be upstairs,” Laura told her, passing by the two of them. “Gonna lie down for a bit. Thanks for watching him, Nat.”

Natasha nodded, eyes still on Cooper as he munched on his food. “All done,” the boy said when he was finished. “Candy?”

She rolled her eyes. “I think you only get candy after you eat vegetables.”

He pointed to the where the grilled cheese had been on the empty plate. “Vegetable!”

“Nope. Sorry, kiddo,” Natasha told him, sticking out her tongue. She stood up, stretching her legs. “How about fruit?”

“Fruit, then candy.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You drive a hard bargain.” Natasha held out her hand. “All right, come on, but you have to tell me what you want and help me cut it.” She led him over to the fridge, letting him pick an apple out of the fruit drawer on the bottom. She set him on the counter with his feet kicking against the cabinets to “help” her cut it, then presented him the thin, even slices. He polished off half of them easily, Natasha consuming the other half.

“Now candy?”

She set him on the floor. “Your memory is too long for your own good,” she muttered, but went to the cupboard anyway. “Okay, what color do you want?”

“Umm…blue!” Cooper said. She opened the cabinet high above his reach—which, really, was just chest-height for Natasha—and angled her body so that he couldn’t see what she was doing before dropping a blue jelly bean into his hand. “There you go.”

“Yay!” Cooper shoved the candy into his mouth, smiling widely. Natasha closed the cupboard again, smirking to herself that he hadn’t yet figured out that more than one jelly bean existed in a pack.

“All right, now what do you want to do?” Natasha asked him. “We can draw, read a book…”

“Dom’noes?” the boy requested, looking up at her.

She smiled. “Sure, we can play dominoes. Go get the tin.” He sped off into the living room, Natasha stealing a jelly bean for herself and following at a more sedate pace. When she arrived, he was wrestling the heavy tin out of one of the floor-level cabinets that held the board games. “Do you need help?” she asked, kneeling down beside him.

“Nope,” he said proudly, finally pulling it free and dragging it across the ground. He pointed proudly. “All by myself.”

“Good job. High five.” His little hand hit hers, and then they were setting up dominoes on the cleared coffee tabletop, Cooper’s brows furrowed in an adorable look of intense concentration as he placed each domino on its short edge. Natasha adjusted them after while he was selecting the next to make sure they are were spaced appropriately.

“Um, Nat?” Laura called from upstairs.

Natasha looked up. “Yeah?” She stood when Laura did not immediately reply, ear cocked toward the ceiling. “Stay here, I’m going to go check on your mama,” she told the boy before heading upstairs. Natasha mounted them two at a time, looking and listening for any sign of Clint’s wife. “Laura?”

“In here.” The call came from her and Clint’s bedroom, and Natasha crossed to the end of the hall and pushed the door open. There was no one immediately inside, so she kept going for the bathroom at the back, entering to find a concerned-looking Laura next to the sink with one hand on the edge to steady herself and the other pressed to her belly. The woman looked up to meet her gaze, her normally steady countenance shaken a little. “I think my water just broke.”

Natasha just stood there for a moment. “Clint’s not here,” she said stupidly.

“I _know_ Clint’s not here,” Laura hissed. She bit her lip, pain overtaking some of her features. “Ow. Ow, yeah that hurts.” She looked at Natasha again. “You…you said you’d delivered a baby before, right?”

“Not on purpose.”

_“What_?!”

“No, I have,” Natasha said hurriedly. She closed the lid of the toilet and helped Laura to sink down on top of it. “It was, ah,in the middle of the jungle in the Congo, but still. No running water, no electricity, just one wad of mosquito netting.”

“Well, this is better than that,” Laura said, forcing herself to take deep breaths.

“Okay, slow down,” Natasha said, pulling out her phone. “Let’s just check how far along you are first. You’re probably just fine to make it to the hospital.”

“It’s a half hour drive,” Laura reminded her, face contorting with discomfort again. “I want to have the baby here or there, Nat; I don’t care which, just— _not on the road_.”

“Okay,” she said in her best, calming voice. She opened the timer app on her phone. “Tell me when you have your next contraction, and I’ll see how far apart they are.”

Laura nodded, breathing heavily. Natasha found Clint’s number in her phone and dialed it, holding it up to her ear. It rang once, twice. Three times. Voicemail.

“He didn’t answer?” Laura asked, a tinge of true worry entering her voice for the first time.

“He’s probably driving,” Natasha said. She’d never seen Clint fail to pick up a call while driving. She dialed it again. Nothing.

“Ow,” Laura murmured, clenching her teeth. “Owowow. It’s happening again.”

Natasha checked the time. “Six minutes. Not bad, but we should get moving.” She offered her arm once the contraction had passed, helping Laura up from the toilet seat. “I know I was going to stay home with Cooper while the two of you went to the hospital, but—”

“Neighbors,” Laura said. “Mile down the road. I’ll call ahead and let them know. Can you grab the go-bag?”

Natasha nodded, handing her the phone and heading back out into the bedroom. She spotted the small black duffel next to the foot of the bed and dropped down beside it, unzipping it to check its contents. Yes, that looked like baby stuff—Natasha did not want to be responsible for accidentally bringing one of Clint’s other go-bags with them instead to the hospital and freak out a ward of new mothers with a bag of flash-bangs and high-tech archery equipment. Zipping it back up and tossing it over her shoulder, she hurried down the stairs. “Cooper! You’re going to go stay with the Masons for a bit, bud.”

The boy looked up from an impressive line of dominoes. “Why?”

“‘Cause your little sister’s coming,” she told him with a smile.

His face lit up. “Really?”

“Uh-huh. Go put on your shoes, okay?”

He looked down at the domino chain, then extended one finger to knock down the one on the end, sending them all cascading into a heap. Then he looked up at her again and ran over to the shoe rack. “Okay!”

Leaving him to it, Natasha headed back toward the stairs to get Laura, only to find her already determinedly making her way down. “Masons are ready for him,” she told Natasha when she reached the ground. “Remind me to bake them a pie or something after we get back.”

Natasha gave a strained laugh and began helping Laura to the door—stopping once at the kitchen island to wait out a contraction—and outside to the car, Cooper bouncing along behind them. Laura took a few deep breaths, face screwing up with pain, Natasha strapping Cooper into the car seat in the backseat of Clint’s truck. “Mama, are you hurt?” he asked.

“Just a little, Cooper, but that’s normal,” Laura assured him from the passenger seat. Natasha climbed in on the driver’s side, shutting the door hard enough to make the entire car rattle. She started the engine and pulled out of the driveway, following Laura’s directions to the Masons’ house. Despite her and Clint’s general agreement to keep Natasha out of sight when she visited the Farmhouse so as to not raise many questions—usually easy given the closest neighbors were a mile away and town another twelve and a half in the opposite direction—Natasha was the one to drop Cooper off at the Mason’s door, checking their faces against the images she had memorized months ago and watching the kid be led inside the house before hurrying back to the truck.

“I think we need to go faster,” Laura said, once she had gotten in again. “They’re longer and speeding up.”

Natasha slammed the stick into reverse, backing up quickly before jamming it into drive again and hitting the gas pedal. “I can go faster.”

”Labor is quicker on the second birth,” Laura said, panting a little. The edges of her lips lifted in a pained smile. “Your driving better be as crazy as Clint claims, Nat.”

Natasha gave her a feral grin, stomping on the pedal even more and tossing the phone to Laura. “Try your dumbass husband again.”

* * *

Four voicemails, three blown stop signs, and one close call later, Natasha pulled the truck into a parking spot at the small hospital. They had made good time—of course they had—but she jumped out of the driver’s seat to help Laura out anyway, going slowly and letting her lean on her as much as she needed to make it to the hospital entrance. The astringent hospital smell swept over them as the doors slid open to admit them, and Laura squeezed Natasha’s arm tightly as her eyes darted around the lobby, as if she could spot Clint among the people milling around inside. A nurse checked them in at the main desk, Natasha filling out a piece of paperwork while they interrogated Laura about her status.

“And how far apart would you say the contractions are?”

“Three or four minutes,” Laura said, mouth tight.

“And your water already broke?”

“Yes, about thirty-five minutes ago.”

“Okay, congratulations, let’s get you into a delivery room,” the nurse said happily, accepting the clipboard back from Natasha.

“Her husband, we’re trying to get in contact with him—”

The nurse showed them inside a room and helped Laura get situated on the bed. “If it’s all right with mom, he’s welcome to join us anytime.”

“Nat,” Laura’s fingers gripped her wrist, the pressure painful and her eyes intense. “Find him. Please. He wouldn’t want to miss this.”

Natasha nodded, extricating her wrist as another contraction took her over and pulled out her phone. Text messages from Clint, finally.

_Is Laura okay?_

_Nat where r u???_

_Nat tell me where you guys are and I’ll meet you there_

_Who has Cooper_

_NAT ANSWER YOUR GODDAMN PHONE_

“I’ll get him,” Natasha promised, stepping away from the bed and hitting Clint’s contact. She exited the delivery room as the nurse was inserting Laura’s IV with a fast stride. “Clint, where the hell are you?”

“Nat! Thank God, finally.” He sounded panicked, and if Natasha’s tension hadn’t been so high already it might have been funny. “I’ve been calling—”

“ _I’ve_ been calling,” she snapped. “Why the fuck didn’t you answer your phone? Where have you been?”

“I kinda got into a fight.”

“CLINT!”

“And got stabbed.”

She wheeled around, striding down the hallway in the opposite direction toward the emergency room. “Barton, you are the worst.”

“I was trying to break it up! I’m in the ER. But it’s not bad, really—”

“I’m walking there now,” Natasha informed him.

“Wait—you and Laura are at the hospital?”

She burst through the ER doors and looked around, no Clint in sight. They must have already taken him into the back. “Yeah. Cooper’s at the Masons’. Which room?”

“3F.”

Walking straight through another set of doors that read ‘Authorized Personnel Only’ in red, Natasha found the correct hallway. 3D, 3E, 3F. She burst through without knocking, stopping short at the sight of Clint fighting off a pack of doctors, one of whom appeared to be going for security. “My wife is in labor! I told you don’t need stitches!” He spotted Natasha. “Nat, tell them!”

She strode toward him, the doctors frozen somewhere between highly confused and wary. Natasha knelt down and grabbed his ankle, looking at the cut. “He’s right, he doesn’t,” she said, hefting him up by the arm. “Let’s go, Laura’s waiting.”

“You can’t just leave…!” the bravest of the doctors said.

Clint tossed a business card-shaped object out of one of his pockets behind him as he and Natasha left the room. “Bill me!”

Then they were together, half-running down the hallway. “You don’t have S.H.I.E.L.D. business cards, so what was that?” Natasha asked as they hurried through the ER waiting room again.

“Been in that pocket for ages. No idea. Might have been a ‘Chance’ card from _Monopoly_.” She snorted and kept going, until they slammed to a stop in front of Laura’s room. He hesitated in front of it.

“Well?” she raised an eyebrow at him. “What are you waiting for?”

“BOTH OF YOU GET IN HERE.”

“We’re being hailed,” Clint quipped before making a dive for the door. Natasha followed immediately, met with the sight of Laura all prepped and ready in the hospital bed, pinker and sweatier than Natasha had left her.

“Thank God,” Laura echoed Clint, grabbing for her husband’s hands as he went to her bedside immediately.

“Is it happening? Did I miss it?”

“You must be the father,” a woman in scrubs that Natasha took to be the doctor said. “You’re right on time. Your wife’s at about nine centimeters, so it won’t be too long now.”

“You’re doing so great,” Clint said, running his fingers through Laura’s mussed hair. “She’s gonna be great.”

Laura reached out her other hand for Natasha, face contorted with pain, but excited underneath it all. Natasha obediently came up on the other side of the bed, and Laura’s fingers closed tightly around hers. “GAHHHHHHH!”

* * *

Lila Nicole Barton came into the world as all babies do: red and squalling and covered in blood. Six lbs and one ounce, eighteen inches, and one and a half weeks early, she was tiny and fragile and something Natasha absolutely did not want to break.

Clint’s eyes were shining as he watched them take her to a corner to get her cleaned up and complete her initial shots, but he stayed with Laura as she worked to push out the placenta. Natasha stood guard as the nurse quickly administered the vitamin K and HepB shots, setting off a new round of angry newborn cries, before she was swaddled back up again in a pink hospital blanket.

The nurse noticed her watching, giving Natasha a smile. “Would you like to carry her back over to mom?”

“Sure,” Natasha said, the word only slightly above a whisper. The nurse beckoned her over and carefully positioned Lila in Natasha’s arms, making sure her little head was fully supported in the crook of her elbow. She stared down at the tiny bundle, Lila’s cries quieting as she gazed up at Natasha with dewy brown eyes. Natasha’s feet moved without her permission, bringing her slowly over to Laura, but she could not tear her gaze from Lila’s, even as she moved to place the baby down on her mother’s chest, nestling her there, shifting the blanket in some instinct she didn’t know she had so that bare skin would touch bare skin. Laura and Clint smiled at her, one exhausted but both close to delirious with happiness. Natasha could feel something rising within her as well, a sensation she could not yet name, or perhaps did not want to.

“So, godmother?” Clint asked again, one of his fingers stroking over Lila’s tiny nose.

The edges of her lips pulled upward of their own accord. “As long as you don’t make her call me that,” she said. “You’ll make me feel old.”

“Never,” Laura agreed, shifting so the baby could latch on if she wanted.

Clint grinned at her. “How does Auntie Nat sound?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any and all feedback appreciated :))))


	39. Chapter 39

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha assembles the Avengers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! I've been holding off updating due to the ongoing email problem to be sure that you all would actually get a new chapter notification. I'm not entirely convinced the problem is fixed, but it's the season premiere day for _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. _(shameless plug to go watch that on ABC tonight at 10/9c) so we're celebrating with a new chapter anyway :)__

_Natasha may have rescued Clint, but it’s not over yet. She decided it’s time to bring in the Avengers._

Present _._

The trip to Stark Tower from her apartment was fifteen minutes, max, most of which was getting to the correct altitude for sustained flight and back down again. She could see the infernal thing off her balcony, after all. Clint was on the stick, guiding them towards the landing pad Stark had built when originally deciding to make his tower home base for the Avengers.

Their headsets crackled. “Please cease and desist,” JARVIS’s smooth voice said. “You are trespassing on private property.”

“For the third time,” Stark’s voice cut in. “Hasn’t Fury got the message yet that just ‘cause I joined his little boy band doesn’t mean I want any S.H.I.E.L.D. goons poking around?”

Exchanging a glance with Clint, Natasha activated her comm. “Stark, it’s us.”

“Oh. Right.”

“We set up a meeting?” Natasha reminded him.

“Yeah, for Thursday.” She waited for him to get it. “…which is today. Right, my bad. Landing approved. JARVIS—”

“Alerting Dr. Banner and Mr. Odinson, sir,” JARVIS replied. Clint navigated the Quinjet in for a perfect vertical landing, and Steve was the first one off once the ramp descended, the two spies following behind. The pad was large, with white and yellow lines painted across the concrete and a metal railing along the edges, with the city in the background. The wind whipped through her hair as Clint hit the button to ascend the ramp again, while Cap walked toward the edge to look eighty-some-odd stories down at the pavement below. She wondered if he’d been afraid of heights, in his old life. Could a super-soldier serum fix that too?

“Welcome back, Agent Romanoff, Agent Barton, Captain Rogers,” JARVIS said, not through the Quinjet’s systems this time but from a speaker somewhere on the building’s side. They turned toward that direction immediately. “This way, please. Sir is having everyone assemble in the lounge.” The thick glass doors opened to admit them, and the three of them piled into the elevator that dinged to their right. After going up another three floors, the lift stopped again, doors opening.

“Lounge” was putting it lightly, in Natasha’s estimation. Immediately to her left was a large sitting room with no fewer than four three-seater couches and a massive home theater system, and to her right was a full-fledged kitchen, stainless steel appliances sparkling either from diligent upkeep or disuse. Natasha suspected the latter. Past that she could see another room with a full, pentagon-shaped lacquered wooden table. In the month she’d been embedded at Stark Industries, she’d thought she had a grasp on Stark’s flair for the excessive. Apparently not. Then again, that was before he’d bought and retrofitted this tower; she had only ever been to the mansion in Malibu and the Stark HQ in LA besides directly after the Battle of New York, and then she’d had bigger worries to think about—namely, Loki, and getting Barton’s head screwed back on straight. The tower had been Pepper’s suggestion, she remembered—the expansion to New York one of her first bold actions as CEO. It was half living space, half office space, and Natasha wondered if he’d ever considered how much of a security risk it was letting employees into the bottom half of his building where all the structural supports were located.

Probably. An all-seeing AI was a pretty darn good protection system.

“Please proceed to the conference table,” JARVIS requested. “Sir will be with you in a moment.” As they rounded the corner, the entirety of the table came into view, revealing one familiar person already seated at it.

“Dr. Banner,” Cap greeted him warmly. “You’re already here.”

“I put things on my calendar and actually check it, unlike some people,” Dr. Banner said, polishing his glasses. “It’s good to see you, Cap.” His greetings to the rest of them were cut off with the sound of fast footsteps in the stairwell, and seconds later Stark himself burst into the room.

“Sorry,” he said, looking entirely unabashed. “Was working on a new version of the suit, installing some bells and whistles, that sort of thing. JARVIS, order one of everything from that burger place I like on 39th, will you?”

“Right away, Sir.”

“This isn’t a social call,” Natasha told him.

“I know, it’s an Avengers-call. I prefer to hear portents of doom with fried, greasy things on hand,” he shrugged her off.

“Doom? Did you say doom?” Banner asked, looking warily from him to Natasha.

“Don’t get worked up,” Clint advised, pulling out a chair and plopping down into it. She selected the one next to him.

“Thanks, that’s really helpful advice,” the scientist said, but he didn’t look angry. Good. A Hulk-out was the last thing she needed right now.

The elevator dinged again, announcing the arrival of Thor and a woman who looked vaguely familiar to Natasha. Thor himself was the most dressed-down she’d ever seen him in a gray hoodie and dark-wash jeans, with his blonde hair pulled back in a small ponytail. The raven-haired woman who walked beside him also wore her hair up, clad in Earth-style clothing—a black tank top and pants and knee-high boots—but the powerful, assured way she walked made Natasha think she was also Asgardian.

The woman approached her, crossing one arm across her chest and inclining her head. “I am Lady Sif, of Asgard,” she confirmed it. “It is an honor to meet you, Lady Natasha. I hope you do not mind that I have accompanied Thor to hear of your quest.”

The god in question plunked his hammer down on the one of the empty sides of the table with a heavy _thunk_. “We were hunting bilgesnipe with the Warriors Three when Heimdall informed us my presence was requested,” Thor offered by way of explanation, dropping into his chair.

“I remember you,” Clint spoke up from beside Natasha. “You fought with him in New Mexico, against the giant shiny thing that blasted fire out of its face.”

“The Destroyer,” Sif nodded. She frowned. “I am sorry; I do not remember your presence.”

He smiled, giving her the kind of signature Clint look meant to put people at ease—the one that said _dumbass_ more than _assassin-who-could-kill-you-in-two-seconds-flat_. “That means I did my job. Clint Barton, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Sif gave him a closed-lip smile. “We are well-met, Clint Barton of S.H.I.E.L.D. I have worked with your organization before, and I look forward to doing so again.” Natasha glanced at Clint, and he subtly gave her the all-clear sign.

“It’s no problem,” Natasha told Sif. “From what Clint tells me, you will be a formidable ally in this fight.” The Asgardian inclined her head again, arm over her chest, and took the chair next to Thor.

“All right! Introductions over, everyone’s seated…” Stark leaned forward on the table, looking directly at Natasha. “Tell me where the aliens are coming from this time, and whether they have a mothership to blow out of the sky so we can skip straight ahead to that part this time.”

“Tony,” Steve said, all noble rebuke. “Have some respect.”

“So no aliens then. Wizards? Demogorgon? Lizard people? Locust-based apocalypse?”

“No aliens,” Natasha confirmed, taking control of the conversation. Her insides thrummed with a sort of nervous tension, scraping this close to talking about her past and yet telling them none of it. She did not let any of it bleed into her voice. “Just humans.” She set a small flash drive on the table. “JARVIS, if you would?”

A blue light shone down from the ceiling, scanning it, before a display popped up on one side of the room. They turned in their chairs to examine it, away from Natasha, and a handy display opened up in the tabletop directly in front of her as well, showing a rotating 3-D model of her adversary’s face. “This is a woman named Alya Naumenka. Seven months ago, she kidnapped Agent Barton in order to get to me. In rescuing him, I discovered that she had started up a program in Russia called the Red Room, modeled after the one where I was trained.”

“When you say _modeled after_ …?” Banner questioned, looking back at her.

“Restarted,” Natasha clarified. “Naumenka was a student there when she was a child.” She swiped away Alya’s image, bringing up the compound’s blueprints instead. “S.H.I.E.L.D. has been doing aerial surveillance on her operation since we got back, and we’re estimating she’s hired a force of about one hundred to one hundred fifty men to guard her facility. And that doesn’t include the students.”

“Students,” Stark repeated, coal-black eyes finally serious. “Children?”

“Yes,” Natasha said. “Based on their shipments of food and supplies, we estimate twenty to thirty. And if it’s like the old Red Room, they’ll be female, well-trained, and deadly.” The back of her neck prickled; every single one of those sitting at the table besides Clint was staring at her.

“Ages?” Steve asked finally.

“We don’t know. Anywhere from two or three to the late teens.”

“Even on Asgard, we do not begin to teach our children to fight until at least the age of five,” Thor said, looking grave. “And even then, it is more games than combat.”

“That’s exactly why we’re going to put an end to it,” Clint said from beside her.

“It will be a joint S.H.I.E.L.D.-Avengers operation if you choose to join,” Natasha said. “We’ve pulled some schematics that might be a little outdated and Fury and Maria Hill will be running things from HQ. One other agent will be joining us on the ground, codename Mockingbird.”

“Operation objectives?” Steve asked.

“Render the facility inoperable. Gather all the data you can. Neutralize the guards, rescue the children.” Natasha’s jaw clenched. “Leave Alya to me.”

“And what are we going to do with them, exactly?” Stark cut in. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about saving kids, but a bunch of misguided mini-Natashalies running amok sounds like a bit of a problem.”

She could feel Clint’s eyes on her, as well as the rest of them. “They’ll have to be brought back and rehabilitated.” She turned to Steve. “Can you talk to some of your contacts in the government? They all came groveling to you asking for your support after you were defrosted; you should still have an in with some of them.”

“And after New York,” Steve said, not looking excited at the prospect.

“I want all these girls brought to the States as refugees,” Natasha told them. “S.H.I.E.L.D. can deal with the foster system, they do it in special cases already, but…I want to make sure the Red Room never reaches them again. They can’t be left in Russia.”

“Okay,” Steve agreed, “but I don’t know how open the U.S. Congress is going to be to letting a whole bunch of Russian spies-in-training through the borders…”

She smiled thinly. “Don’t worry, they’re stupidly much more concerned about the Middle East than any Russian interference at the moment.”

Everyone was silent. Too much they seemed to catch what she wasn’t saying.

“Any questions?” Clint asked.

Slowly, they shook their heads. “I already told you, I’m in,” Steve assured her.

“If I can be stationed away from the kids…” Banner said.

Clint nodded. “We’ll make sure you are.”

“We are with you if you will have us, Lady Natasha,” Thor pledged his support.

Her eyes slid to Tony. “Well then, I guess that’s a full Avengers complement,” Stark said. “JARVIS, is the Mark XII ready for sustained flight?”

“All systems came back green, sir,” JARVIS replied.

“Okay then, Red, when do we leave?”

* * *

Mobilizing the Avengers took less time than Natasha expected. She and Clint were nearly ready to go from the start, their tac suits and weapons just needing to be moved from the S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinjet to the upgraded version Stark insisted would be roomier for all seven of them. Thor merely had to step outside onto the landing platform and raise his hammer to the sky before a bolt of lightning crackled down on him and Sif, changing them both into their Asgardian armor. Steve jogged out—hopefully not literally, or at least not the entire way—to his Brooklyn apartment to fetch his suit and shield, while Stark and Banner distributed $250 worth of burgers and fries and focused on figuring out which supplies needed to be loaded into the jet.

She found that it was indeed larger than the current S.H.I.E.L.D. model when Natasha first stepped onto it, with three separate compartments instead of just the cockpit and the cargo section. She and Clint accepted the seats up front when he offered, mostly because they were the only ones who knew exactly where they were headed and could coordinate with S.H.I.E.L.D. as far as a landing spot. Then it was carrying in crates of medical supplies, tranquilizers, and last minute food and water provisions, since as Steve pointed out they had no idea what condition the students might be in when they found them. With Thor off informing Odin of their plans, Sif outpaced them all when it came to loading the jet, carrying twice as many things with each hand as any of the rest of them could manage.

“So are you, like, a goddess of something too?” Clint asked her as they brought in duffels of emergency blankets.

“Grain and the earth, as given by my family,” Sif said politely, setting the bags down. Her lips pursed. “I detest farming.”

“Oh.”

Despite the feeling of being rubbed raw by current events, Natasha smirked.

“How’s Loki doing, by the way?” Clint asked, voice carefully measured.

“He is imprisoned on Asgard, as promised,” Sif assured him. “He will not escape again.”

“Yeah, but are there punishments, or…?” Natasha slipped away back toward the cockpit, sitting down in the pilot’s seat and beginning to familiarize herself with the controls. A loud banging out reached her ear, and she looked back to see Stark hitting his hand against the plane’s metal side.

“All loaded up!” he announced. “Ready for takeoff? Last chance for a bathroom break for, oh, eight hours. I’m not letting anyone else use my suit.”

“Gross,” Clint said, sliding into his chair beside her. Calls of assent rose from other parts of the plane.

“Takeoff in one minute,” Natasha said, slipping on her headset. “Strap in!”

Clint tapped her on the wrist, and she met his eyes. “How are you feeling?” he signed.

Natasha gave a slight shrug of her shoulders, taking her hands off the controls to sign back. “Too late now.”

His lips quirked upward slightly at her attempt at humor. “They’ll come through. And you always have me.”

“I know,” she said. Natasha looked out toward the horizon, signing one last thing before pulling back on the throttle. “Alya won’t know what hit her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See you in a few days! Next up is Iceland, "marital" problems, and some good ol' election interference ;)


	40. Chapter 40

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> STRIKE Team Delta goes on a mission to Iceland.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully the email issue is a bit more resolved now. If Natasha assembling the Avengers doesn't ring a bell for you, you might've missed the previous chapter in the confusion, so I would suggest taking a look at that ;)
> 
> Also, disclaimer for this chapter: there are no Starbucks stores in Iceland - so, congrats, I guess? Also, apologies in advance for any butchered Icelandic.

_At S.H.I.E.L.D., Natasha and Clint made quite a name for themselves as STRIKE Team Delta. At the Barton Farmhouse, Natasha made another name for herself—Auntie Nat._

Past.

“Coulson. Why do we always gotta be married?”

Their handler looked up, replying cautiously as if expecting it to be a trap. With Barton, you never knew. “Well, you don’t look similar enough for brother and sister to be believable.”

“Yeah, but we could be half-siblings. Step-siblings. We could just be traveling roommates!”

“Simplest cover story is the easiest cover story,” Coulson shook his head. “I’m not having you explain your unorthodox living situation every time you meet someone.”

Natasha grinned at him. “Two people as beautiful as us walk down the street together and they have to be married, Barton.”

Clint stuck his tongue out at her. “I just want my own bed,” he whined.

Coulson had the grace to actually look concerned. “Is there a problem going on between the two of you that I should know about?”

“Natasha keeps putting her cold feet on my thighs. We were in _Siberia_ …”

She smirked; their handler put his head in his hands. “Agent Romanoff…”

“Send us somewhere warmer?” she suggested.

Coulson snorted. “Technically, I will be. How does Iceland sound?”

“Better than Greenland,” Clint muttered. “But did you know Bobbi’s in the Caribbean right now? She kept sending us pictures.”

“Unfortunately, that op was already taken,” Coulson deadpanned, passing them both a rather thick manila folder. “But how do you feel about interfering in a foreign government’s election?”

* * *

“I feel lied to,” Clint complained as he bundled up again.

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “About the temperature?”

“No, it’s at least thirty, that’s fine,” he said. “About the op. Interfering in an election sounded fun. This is more preventing someone else from interfering. Not the same thing.”

“Sucks playing for the good guys,” said Natasha, who had done her fair share of malicious election interference in the past. At least Armenia had recovered. Sort of.

They exited the S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse together, a brisk wind whipping at their faces as soon as they stepped outside, but Clint was right—nothing compared to Siberia. “These guys have a stupid name, too,” Clint said, taking her hand and interlacing their fingers as they began walking down the street. They continued their conversation in lowered voices, from the outside a married couple sharing a few inside jokes. “Makes me feel better about framing them.”

She smiled. “Oh, yes, it’s the _name_ that makes them worth framing. Not the fact that they’re flagrant xenophobic white supremacists.”

“Yeah, but also—the Bræðralagið.” The sound was completely alien coming out of Clint’s mouth. Natasha’s eyebrows drew together.

“What did you say?” Damn it, why had she never learned Icelandic?

“That’s how you say it. Bræðralagið.”

“Brythedalaguith,” Natasha said, butchering half the syllables.

Clint looked like he was holding back a laugh. “Eh. Close. It means the Brotherhood. That’s one point for me, right?”

“I changed my mind,” Natasha grumbled. “I hate this country. Now we know why S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t even have a satellite office here.” She knew exactly why she knew nothing of Icelandic; the Red Room had no interest in imparting a language spoken by only three hundred thousand people who also almost all spoke English in a country with no strategic value to the Soviet Union. But still, it made her feel blind in a way that most countries didn’t; her ability to eavesdrop severely dampened.

“Aw, you’re cute when you’re angry,” Clint teased.

Natasha adopted her harshest, deadliest expression. “Say that to my face.”

Unfortunately, it had long since stopped working on Barton. “I just did. Your resting murder face is pretty cute too.”

She huffed, dropping it. “Why do _you_ know Icelandic?” she asked grumpily.

“Because you don’t.” She narrowed her eyes. “Fury said he wanted our skillsets to complement each other!”

“And?”

“And because it’s usually me acting like the idiot tourist,” Barton deflated.

She grinned. “Mm-hmm. Mumbai.”

“ _Well, obviously I didn’t know that I was going around saying ‘cow fart’!_ ” She burst out laughing, ignoring his dirty look. “It’s not funny; cows are a much bigger deal in India.”

Natasha chortled. “It was a little funny.”

“Mér þykir vænt um þig,” Clint swore at her, but they both were smiling as they continued down the street. He pointed ahead of them. “Last Starbucks of civilization. We have time, right?”

Natasha checked her phone. “Fifteen minutes.”

“Totally enough time.” She sighed, then followed him inside, feeling a wave of heat hit her as soon as the door swung shut behind them. The location was nearly empty—the Icelandic had better taste in coffee than Starbucks, apparently, and she couldn’t blame them—so Clint walked straight up to the counter. “Grande hot caramel macchiato, please.” Natasha made a disgusted face perfectly timed for his glance back at her as if to ask what she wanted. “And an iced vanilla latte for my very boring wife, same size.”

“With an extra shot of espresso,” she requested, coming up behind him. The barista punched in their order and swiped Clint’s cover’s credit card. He accepted it back and they walked back to the other end of the counter to wait for their drinks.

“I am _not_ boring,” Natasha said. “That abomination you ordered is just entirely made of sugar.”

“Sugar is great.” She rolled her eyes.

Their drinks came out in record time—probably due to the empty shop—and they exited hastily with another check of the time. “Six minutes,” she announced.

“Time to cheat our way through security,” Clint sighed under his breath. In another few blocks they were approaching the Parliament House, a 19th century brown-bricked building. He talked his way through the guards while she snuck their illicit items through in typical STRIKE Team Delta fashion, and soon enough they were walking down the hallway past offices once again hand in hand.

“Room 120,” Natasha said, stopping next to it. “That’s where he said the meeting would be, right, love?”

“I think so, honey,” Clint replied, eyes dancing playfully at her. Natasha tried the door, found it locked, and glanced down the hallway. Empty, for now. She picked the lock with efficiency and they both slid through into the empty office, closing and locking the door behind them.

“All right,” Natasha said, slipping out of her persona for a second as Clint went to check the perimeter. “Now we just wait for Ágústsson, kill him before he can fraudulently win the election, Aría Marensdottir keeps her seat, and the Brythedalaguith does not get to be part of the coalition in Parliament.” She waited for Clint to laugh at her pronunciation but none was forthcoming. “Clint?”

“You’re going to want to see this.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m not,” Natasha muttered, but followed his voice into the next room anyway. She was confronted with two bodies in a large pool of blood. She immediately drew her gun from underneath her bulky winter coat, but it was clear both of them were already dead. The one closest to Clint was female, the one by the door male, both in expensive-looking suits. Clint nudged the woman’s face up toward the ceiling with his foot.

“Yep, that’s Marensdottir,” he confirmed, mouth set in a grim line.

Natasha knelt down next to the man. “And this is our mark.” She felt for a pulse, just in case. “He’s dead, but still warm.”

“A third party?” Clint mused, one hand reaching for his retractable bow.

“She fought back,” Natasha said, pointing to the knife in the woman’s hand, slick with blood. “He expected her to go down easy. I guess our intel was wrong. Rigging the election wasn’t enough for them.”

“Or that.” Clint pointed upwards at a TV playing on mute with subtitles running underneath above their heads. _ÞINGMAÐUR ARÍA MARENSDOTTIR TALAR GEGN FASISMA,_ read the headline, with the news broadcaster talking animatedly above it.

“Fasisma,” Natasha said. “Is that what I think it is?”

He looked down at the woman’s body. “She publicly rebuked them, and they did this.” Clint scratched his head. “Now what?”

“Technically the objective is achieved. They can’t rig it for a dead guy.”

“Yeah, but they still succeeded in murdering her. I kinda want to get them for that.”

Natasha stood up. “Frame them?”

“It’s not really framing if they did it,” Clint flashed her a quick smile. “He goes in a trash compactor, they find her body at the Bræðralagið camp.”

“I can live with that.” Clint opened his mouth. “I call camp.”

He stopped, then pouted. “Mean.”

“I had to do it last time,” Natasha reminded him. “And _that_ was two guys, not just one. Sprayed blood all over my good suit. Took three whole laundry cycles to get it out.”

“Ugh. Fine.” Clint nudged the man’s body with his foot, then kicked him until he was fully on the rug. He pulled a thin bodybag out of his pocket and inflated it, then began unceremoniously stuffing the man inside so they wouldn’t drip everywhere—a major red flag. Natasha grabbed the woman under the arms and pulled her away from the rug Clint had obviously claimed, depositing her more gently on a similar throw rug in the front of the office and doing the same with her own bag. Finally, she pushed her to one side of the rug and carefully rolled the rug over her until the body was entirely obscured. After checking the outside of her roll to make sure none of the bloodstains had made it all the way through to the outside, she pushed the rug against one wall and set about cleaning away any trace of red on the floor with the help of the bathroom next door, spraying down a S.H.I.E.L.D. formula and wiping it up with paper towels after a few minutes.

“Ready?” Clint asked her once everything was spotless once again.

“We’re going to need a cart.”

“Room for the cleaning crew was three down and to the right,” he suggested. A couple busted locks and a uniform change later, Natasha and Clint were off down the hall clad in janitorial uniforms pushing a cart filled with two rugs and three trash bags—one for each of their outerwear and one full of bloodied paper towels. Once they were out the back door, they ditched the cart in favor of a taxi. Clint got out three blocks from the dump, while Natasha continued riding out past the edge of the city towards the national forest where the Bræðralagið were hiding their camp. What it was with white supremacist groups and hiding heavily-armed militias out in the wilderness she wasn’t sure, but regardless it would make them easier to frame.

If the taxi driver was confused by the woman getting out at the edge of a national forest lugging a large carpet behind her, the tip she gave him was more than enough to keep his mouth shut. Once the cab had sped off into the distance back towards Reykjavík, Natasha slipped in between the trees as quietly as she could while lugging a carpet and a body behind her. It was a nice day for the trek, at least—the air crisp and not cold enough to steal the breath from her lungs, and the twigs and leaves crunched softly under her feet. The trees here, some sort of pine, stretched tall into the sky above her head, the sun dappling the forest floor. Even an hour in, the weight of the carpet did not quite bother her, as she enjoyed the exertion even if she’d had to switch shoulders every so often so that no one part of her body was doing the brunt of the work for so long. The trail track of the carpet edge dragging against the ground was quite conspicuous if anyone was looking, but Clint would meet up with her before too long.

Speaking of Clint.

A branch cracked behind her with a muffled swear word, and she turned to see him looking sheepishly at her. “You know, sneaking up on me in the middle of an op is dangerous,” she told him, letting none of her amusement into her tone.

“You looked happy. It was strange,” Clint replied, dropping his sneaking stance and jogging up to meet her.

“Long walks through the woods are relaxing.”

He cracked a smile. “And the dead body?”

“Irrelevant.”

Clint rolled his eyes, then hefted up the other end of the carpet over his shoulder, taking half of the weight. Between the two of them, it looked like they were carrying a very short, very woolen log.

It was only another three quarters of a mile to the militia’s campsite, so it was spent mostly in silence, walking as quietly as they could and the person in the back checking to make sure no obvious footprints were left behind. Despite the help, Natasha’s shoulders slowly began to ache, and she was glad once the tents came into view, even if they were draped in a colorful assortment of racist flags—really, what did an Icelandic white nationalist group have to do with a flag of the American Confederacy?—and so many firearms that the guns almost appeared as decorations.

Natasha and Clint dropped the carpet softly to the ground behind a large rock and took cover themselves, squinting at the camp. Figures in large jackets roamed around, talking with one another, tending to the fires, or polishing their weapons. “I hate these guys,” Clint muttered, eyes on the swastikas.

Natasha unfurled the body they had carried all this way carefully, then took out a knife. “You know what we have to do, right?” He made a face but nodded. She held out the knife to him. “It should probably be in Icelandic. I’ll work on the clothes.” Clint accepted the knife with pained eyes that matched the vague roiling in Natasha’s gut, but she did what she had to do anyways, using a second knife and her fingers to carefully rip away at the woman’s clothing. She tried to preserve as much of her modesty as she could while carrying out an act designed to tear it away. Clint was stone-faced as he carved words into her forehead and near her collarbone, words that Natasha was glad she didn’t know what they meant, though she could probably guess. Skækja. Ólöglegt. Blóð svikari.

Clint closed his eyes when they were done, and Natasha could relate. Somehow, this seemed a little worse than simply pulling a trigger had in her past. Marensdottir had a family, a daughter who would see this when the police brought her mother’s body back. But the woman was dead, and the men who financed and cajoled and celebrated her killer had to be revealed and pay for it, their twisted ideology spurned by the news media that would report on this tonight. If Natasha had to put a little more red on her ledger to do that, she would do it.

They exchanged no more words then, Natasha simply passing him the phone. A burner she’d bought in cash many years ago, long past when any security tapes would have her face in their hard drives for buying it. She had a whole collection of these for nearly every country, her ‘vault,’ Clint called it, but he couldn’t deny its usefulness.

Clint dialed 112, then spoke to the emergency operator. “Hi, yes, um, I would like to report a murder.” His voice was shaky, uncertain, the young acolyte suddenly realizing he’d gotten in over his head. “I—I didn’t realize they were actually going to do it, and now she’s dead, and—” Natasha held up her regular phone, silently counting out the seconds for him before they’d have enough information to thoroughly trace the call and get an exact location so that he could hang up. “You have to come quickly. They’re here, we’re all here, they have guns—” Natasha’s timer dropped down to zero and Clint hung up. They gave it another few seconds just in case the people running emergency services were a bit slow, then broke the phone in half and smashed it against the rock until it was just pieces of warped metal and plastic.

“Time to go,” Natasha said. With one last look at Marensdottir’s body, the two of them melted back into the forest.

* * *

“ _In breaking news tonight, we are saddened to report the death of MP Aría Marensdottir,_ ” the solemn newscaster was saying above their heads as the two of them sat in the Reykjavík airport, waiting for their flight back to the States. “ _After an anonymous tip was called in to police, her body was found, mutilated, outside a militia camp hidden in Reykjanesfólkvangur Reserve. According to the official police report, this camp was run by the Bræðralagið, the far-right organization that were the main sponsors of Marensdottir’s political challenger in the upcoming election, Gunnar Ágústsson. Ágústsson could not be reached for comment, and police believe he may have committed the murder and is on the run. Eighty-six other members of the Bræðralagið who were at the camp when the body was found have also been taken into police custody, possibly facing conspiracy charges._ ”

Clint and Natasha glanced at each other, satisfied but pained expressions on their faces. Clint’s hand found hers, and squeezed it once, tightly. “ _We go now live to a public announcement from the MP’s daughter, Eyva._ ” The screen switched to a podium outside what looked to be the Parliament building. “ _My mother worked tirelessly as a public servant for the people of Iceland._ ” Natasha’s teeth clenched until she forcibly relaxed her jaw. The young woman behind the podium was probably twenty, twenty-five years old. “ _She always did what she thought was right, and spoke her mind against those who would rather she have been silent. In her memory, I will be running for my mother’s seat in the Southwest Constituency. Thank you all for your support and allowing my family the space to grieve during this difficult time._ ”

Clint tilted her face away from the TV, forcing her to look at him. “Nat. We did good, you know.”

“I know.” He didn’t quite look like he believed her, so she put in a little more effort, forcing some facsimile of a smile onto her face. “I know, Clint. There was nothing else we could have done with the information we had.”

“You just haven’t had to do something that sadistic in a while.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D.’s making me go soft,” she muttered.

“You’ll never be soft,” Clint said, and Natasha knew it wasn’t an insult. “You always get the job done, no matter what cost to yourself.”

“And that isn’t a problem?” she asked. “With…the you know who’s?”

“Nope,” he said. “We trust you.”

She ducked her head. There was that word again. “I know.”

Clint smiled, leaning back in his uncomfortable airport seat. “Since it’s too soon to go back to the Farm and Coulson’s only giving us two nights off between assignments, what do you say we have a movie night?”

Natasha accepted the change of subject. “Just the two of us?”

“Nah, I was thinking we invite Kate and Coulson if you’re up to it. We can see _Jurassic Park_ or something.”

“Oh, yeah, that went so well last time,” Natasha said, rolling her eyes. “Kate’s already suspicious enough of us, remember?”

“ _Wait, why do you have separate apartments?_ ” Clint mimicked Kate’s voice, badly. “ _You two aren’t together? Wow, these are really nice for New York—what jobs do you guys_ have _? Why is there an old dude in your apartment? Is he Russian mafia too?_ ”

“I did like seeing Coulson’s face on that one,” Natasha laughed, feeling the weight of their actions in Iceland begin to lift from her shoulders.

“Yeah, somehow I don’t think our quick-thinking cover story of him being the dog-walker for a dog we don’t own is gonna hold up for long,” Clint stuck his tongue out at her.

“Shut up. She caught me off-guard and that stupid dog was trying to lick my face.”

“Because he loves you!”

“Uh-huh. Also, why would we keep inviting our dog walker over for movie night?”

“Uf. I don’t know,” Clint sighed. “Kate’s well over eighteen now; we could just tell her. Plus I’ve seen her archery skills. How would you feel about me getting a sidekick?”

“You are not roping Kate into this shitshow,” Natasha said.

“But I could just slip a S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy of Operations pamphlet into her backpack while she’s over some time…”

“ _No_ ,” Natasha said. “My sidekick does not get a sidekick.”

“Wait, what?”

Natasha grinned. “You heard me.”

“I am offended,” Clint told her. “Just for that, I’m taking the window seat on this flight.”

“You can try. I’ll text Kate and Coulson about movie night. What if we told her he _is_ Russian mafia?”

“Ugh, no. Remember that time May was telling us the story about the two of them picking up the 0-8-4 in Добыча?”

“Oh, god, yes, I do. Didn’t he tell the guard he was there for the protection of all of his cats?” Laughter overtook both of them. “Okay, different cover story…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting close to the end, guys!! Every chapter from here on out is one of my favs for various reasons, from the two special "past" chapters coming up (kudos if you can guess what those are!), to the two-part cliffhanger (hehe) and the final chapter that will bring this all to a close. Feedback is always appreciated!
> 
> Until next time!


	41. Chapter 41

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha, Clint, and the rest of the Avengers storm Alya’s compound.

_Natasha assembled the Avengers to go after Alya Naumenka and her new Red Room program._

Present.

As usual, the blueprints did not quite do the actual compound justice. It sprawled out in front of them on the rocky tundra, even from their current vantage point of hundreds of feet above. Natasha sent their jet into a dive, echoing the S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinjet across the way. The planes spiraled down together, Bobbi and Natasha matching each other’s trajectory in concert, speeding down to the earth quickly to allow Alya as little mobilization time as possible, though Natasha doubted it would matter. She and Alya had been trained in the same place, and if she was Alya, she would have been expecting a retaliatory strike from Natasha and maybe even S.H.I.E.L.D. ever since she and Clint had disappeared. Whether she would expect the Avengers, after seven months of Natasha stonewalling them out of the investigation… That, maybe not. Not when every instinct she had still screamed at Natasha to get out, now, because who was she to trust these people, much less ask them to put themselves in danger, for her? Who was she to throw away decades of training on the pipe dream that was the Avengers Initiative—training that had kept her alive, kept her fighting, long past her expiration date?

Clint hit the button to extend the ramp as soon as the landing gear touched the ground, springing smoothly out of his chair as Natasha shut everything down. By the time she exited the cockpit, Cap, Thor, Sif, Banner, and the Iron Man armor—presumably with Stark inside—were already assembled and greeting the S.H.I.E.L.D. team coming off the other Quinjet. Besides Bobbi, the S.H.I.E.L.D. squadrons gave the Avengers a wide berth, the medical team setting up a triage station in the back of their Quinjet while the STRIKE team set up a defensive perimeter around the two jets, the ground they would be required to hold while the Avengers did their thing.

The circle the team had made flowed outward to allow her to enter it. Cap looked at her, gaze solemn. “We’re standing with you, Natasha. We don’t have to know exactly why it’s about, or what past history you have with it. It’s obvious this is important to you. So we’re here to help.”

“And to blow stuff up,” Stark said. 

“Aye, we wish to fill the gates of Hel with the screams of those who have wronged you, Lady Natasha,” Thor added. 

“Thanks,” she said, looking around at them all. Her eyes focused on Banner, who was shifting from foot to foot rather uncomfortably. “And you, Dr. Banner?”

“Moral support?” Bruce asked uncertainly. A hint of a smile ghosted across her face.

For a moment, Natasha paused. They all gazed back at her, waiting, perhaps to see what her reaction would be or perhaps for her order—and maybe both. She’d never expected to be surrounded by people like this, to be more than _We is greater than I_ and _Love is for children_ and _Mind over body_ , phrases from the Red Room that still lingered in the recesses of her mind to jump to the forefront when she least expected it. 

But now she was about to take down that nightmare from her past—she nodded at them, her fellow Avengers plus Lady Sif and Bobbi Morse, and Hill and Fury nestled in her ear. “Let’s go finish this.” They accepted her terse words as if they had been a million thank-yous, accepting her in her closed off, aloof state. Stark activated his thrusters and grabbed Banner around the middle—something the scientist looked none too thrilled about—and shot upwards into the sky. Thor followed with a whirl of his hammer. Starting off at a swift pace, Cap began to jog down the hill towards the building, and Clint made to follow him. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Natasha asked, one eyebrow raised. “You really think I’m going to let you out of my sight?” 

“Cap can’t go alone,” he pointed out. They turned to the two women left standing with them.

“I had wished to fight this battle alongside you, Lady Natasha,” Sif said. “Since the fall of the Valkyrie, it is not often I get to have the privilege of fighting with a female warrior such as myself, and I would be honored to fight with one as skilled as you.”

“I’ll go,” Bobbi volunteered. She made eye contact with each of them. “Don’t die out there, all right?”

“We shall endeavor not to perish in the sortie,” Lady Sif promised. 

“Isn’t that your phrase your thing with Hunter?” Clint asked Bobbi. “Does he know you’re using your special couple phrase with us?”

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” she said. “Besides, it’s always worked before, so we’d might as well spread it around a little.” The S.H.I.E.L.D. agent pulled the staves from their magnetic clips on her back. “See you in there.” She took off after Steve. 

* * *

Getting into the compound was easy, if not familiar. Instead of a S.H.I.E.L.D. STRIKE team with some battering rams and a few bricks of C-4, it was Iron Man and the Hulk entirely decimating the front wall for them before leaving to go take care of a squadron of snipers that had taken up shop on the roof who had stupidly tried to target Thor rather than someone a bit more, well, killable. Natasha, Clint, and Sif ducked through once the dust had cleared, the Asgardian proving invaluable in her ability to move large chunks of rubble out of their path.

Natasha had a gun in her right hand and her left empty, as she anticipated using her Widow’s Bite just as much as the conventional weapon, and not holding a gun increased accuracy and mobility. Extra magazines and charges for the Bites took up most of the space on her belt, while Clint had his bow and a full quiver of arrows that he restocked after every corridor was clear, wiping off the blood as best he could. So far, just normal goons—Red Room soldiers without even any special training, which put Natasha on edge, making her feel like she was underestimating Alya. Wading through and just waiting for the other shoe to drop was a very poor plan.

There was a loud metal clang, and she turned to see bullets ping off of Sif’s small shield, the Asgardian deflecting them away from Clint and Natasha’s backs. The two of them took cover immediately, Natasha firing off a few rounds and Clint taking out at least one of the men with a well-placed arrow. Sif stalked toward their attackers directly and cut the last with a mighty heave of her sword. He slumped to the floor in a rapidly expanding pool of blood.

“Thanks,” Clint said for both of them, and Sif gave him a semi-feral smile. Dust was streaked across her face as Natasha was sure it was streaked across her own, but instead of looking more human because of it, the battle-hungry light in her eyes further distinguished her as alien.

“You are welcome,” Sif said, wiping off her notched silver sword and rejoining them. Natasha pushed the button for the elevator, which lit briefly before dying. “I will take care of this, if one of you will take point on our behind.”

Natasha nodded, stepping away and raising her weapons again to keep an eye on their six. Sif deposited her sword onto her back—magnetic, perhaps? or an Asgardian invention that eliminated the unwieldiness of a scabbard—and fitted her fingers in the hairline crack between the elevator doors, bending and warping the metal in order to get them in. Then she began to pull the doors apart, the metal giving a long screech of protest. After a few moments, the doors had been opened enough to fit them through one at a time, and Sif stepped back, pleased. She gestured. “After you, Lady Na—”

A tiny figure darted out of the elevator, a blur of dirty blonde hair and a gray smock. Clint was fastest to recover, fitting a trip wire arrow into his bow and firing it down the hallway in front of the girl, the razor-thin wire pulled along behind. The girl flinched and tried to stop, but her momentum carried her right into it, ankles catching on the wire and sending her tumbling forward. The little body smacked face-first against the stone floor. “Careful,” Natasha said needlessly as they approached, all weapons drawn. Clint hooked the tip of his bow under her shoulder, flipping the girl over onto her back. Though she tried to stop it, a visceral revulsion awoke in Natasha’s chest as she stared down at the girl whose eyes were closed and nose leaked a steady stream of blood from her fall.

“She looked like she was trying to escape,” Clint said. His jawline was rigid. “She looks to be, what, four?” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Jesus.”

“Doesn’t mean anything,” Natasha said around the lump in her throat. “She could still be dangerous. They all could be.” She closed her eyes briefly. “I need to finish this.”

“I will remove her from the field of battle,” Sif offered. “No youngling shall come to harm in my care, nor shall I be easily overpowered if caught by surprise.”

Clint nodded. “Thank you, Lady Sif.” The woman inclined her head, one arm crossed over her chest again, before dropping it to scoop up the girl in question, whose head lolled against her bicep. Carrying her in her arms, Sif disappeared back the way they’d come, stepping deftly over the bodies, rubble, and general carnage they’d left in their wake. Clint nudged her. “You good?”

Natasha snapped her wayward mind back to the mission at hand. “Yeah. I’m good.” Her tone brooked no argument and she made sure her posture didn’t either, slipping swiftly into the elevator. She surveyed the buttons, going from G5 to 4. “Any guess as to which level we want?”

“We’re on 3 now. Might as well finish it out before going underground,” Clint said. “Why do all villains have to put the best parts of their secret lairs underground?”

Natasha grunted in agreement, hitting the “4” button. The elevator creaked but then began moving smoothly upward. It dinged, and the doors slid open to reveal a full platoon of men in black tactical gear about halfway down the hallway with their weapons raised. “Wrong floor!” Clint yelped, both of them immediately pinning themselves to opposite sides of the elevator to take advantage of what little cover the front walls beside the open doors afforded them. Natasha began firing, aiming for faces since the bulletproof vests made other areas problematic. Bullets cascaded into the space between them, riddling the back of the elevator with holes. Clint shot arrow after arrow, but the bulk of the men continued forward, undeterred with the few shots the two of them managed to get off without being hit. He pressed his hand to his ear. “We’re a little bit pinned down, anybody copy? Top floor southeast side.”

Just as the men moved within spitting distance, the wall to the right of them exploded in a plume of heat and dust. The Iron Man armor glided inside, thrusters cutting out to drop him the last few inches to the floor with a solid clunk. Mini pin missiles ejected out of the pods on his shoulders, each finding their target in one of the men who had not been blown backward by the initial blast. Six more bodies fell at Clint and Natasha’s feet, and Iron Man’s glowing eyes turned on them.

“Well, that was…efficient,” Clint said.

“Thanks, Tony,” Natasha said, and meant it. Not for saving their lives—they probably would have been fine, they’d been in much worse situations, but certainly not as unscathed as they were currently—but for showing up at all, what with their tumultuous history. Deception. Espionage. Needles. Letting Pepper get her in ‘the divorce.’ She almost felt bad for all the shit she’d pulled at Stark Industries, even if it had been to save his life.

Almost.

“Katniss. Widow.” He mimed something that might have been a salute, or else flipping them off. You never knew with Stark. “Try not to die without me.” The repulsers activated again, and Iron Man took off back out the hole he had created.

Clint looked at her. “I have a good feeling about downstairs.”

She sighed. “I have a bad feeling about downstairs, which is pretty much the same thing at this juncture.” Resigning herself to their fate, Natasha hit the button for G1.

There were no Red Room soldiers lying in wait for them when the doors dinged open again, which was good, because Stark would have a lot more trouble with a last minute save with them underground. Natasha and Clint moved swiftly through the hallways, dispatching any soldiers they found as they went. “I’m gonna be really pissed if she isn’t here, and this is all a wild goose chase,” Clint said.

“She’s here,” Natasha replied. He raised an eyebrow. “I can feel it.”

“Ah, the infamous Black Widow spidey-sense. Oh wait.” She rolled her eyes at him, then launched herself at another set of guards, forgoing the gun this time in favor of getting hands on flesh. Probably a stupid move, in hindsight, as another two appeared around the corner, but at least they seemed unwilling to shoot with her tangled up with their fellow guard. Clint shot a few arrows before it became too close quarters and he was forced to go hand-to-hand as well. Tripping one of her opponents, Natasha knocked the weapon from the other’s hand and ducked under his fist as it swung for her head. Another moment and she had her legs wrapped around his head, squeezing, and she rolled off his limp body to take out the other with a swift kick to the groin followed by a sharp uppercut.

“Now this is like Budapest,” Clint called over to her. The momentary distraction allowed one of the remaining Red Room soldiers to launch himself at him, and Barton went down in a tumble of limbs. Though he probably didn’t need help, Natasha jumped after him anyway, slinging her arms around the man’s chest and pulling him off before snapping his neck. 

“That keeps coming up,” Natasha said, standing over Clint, who was on his back looking up at her. She held out a hand. “I can only assume you’re referring to how I kicked ass and you got your ass kicked.”

“Ha ha, very funny,” he grumbled, accepting her hand. All of a sudden his grip tightened and he pulled downward, shoving her out of the way before lifting his bow and firing at yet another Red Room operative who had been trying to sneak up on them. 

“Hey, Barton,” she said when the corridor was quiet again. “We make a good team.”

He stared at her for a moment incredulously. “You’re just now realizing this?” He strung another arrow to shoot a man coming from her direction but she beat him to it, picking up her gun and shooting him in the chest without even turning around. 

“No. I’m just pointing it out,” she told him. “You know I’ve never thought of myself as someone who would be good on a team.”

“This is because of the Avengers, isn’t it?” Clint asked, slipping the spare arrow back into his quiver and beginning to collect the others by hand as she confiscated a few extra guns and clips from the fallen. “They came through for you, and you didn’t expect them to.”

“The previous teams I’ve been on before you never worked out that well,” Natasha said darkly. A shadow crossed over her face. “Marina. Ivan.”

“Don’t remind me about that sick bastard,” Clint growled. “If we wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him for you myself. Maybe a good ol’ two arrows to the eyeballs, or maybe crucifixion-style.”

“Thanks,” Natasha smiled. The sound of repulsor blasts echoed off the walls from somewhere above them. “And yes, they did come through.”

“Individually, they’re a bit trying, I’ll admit,” he said, sticking the arrows into a separate section in his quiver. Natasha knew from previous experience the blood would gum up the automated tipping mechanism in the other side if he didn’t wipe them off well first, so he often bypassed the mechanism altogether when they were on the go. “But I think it’s good. For Stark, for Cap, for Banner, for you and me, for all of us. Well, maybe not Thor. I’m still not quite sure why an immortal prince of Asgard sticks around with us.”

Natasha said nothing, just unholstered her Glock again and checked her Bites. Barton followed as she moved forward with the other held in front of her. Before long, they had cleared the floor, finding a stairwell on the other side that would take them down to the next one. Almost immediately when the door opened, Natasha knew this space was different, her spine stiffening and a peculiar prickling making its way down her calves.

“Nat?” Clint asked from beside her, and only then did Natasha realize she hadn’t moved. She stepped out gingerly into the hallway, eyes sweeping from left to right and back again, looking for something—anything—out of place. The dormitories, visible through open doors with their rickety metal bed frames and cuffs all in a row. The marble tiling of the floor. The red velvet draperies on the walls. The lettering on the placards next to each door.

“I’m good,” she said, forcing her breathing to stabilize.

“This is…different,” Clint offered. “Is it…?”

Natasha checked the mag on her gun, slamming it back up into place with more force than was strictly necessary as a small tremor went up through her hands. “Stay close.”

“Always.”

She ducked into the first room, one of the dormitories, gun aloft. She swept the beds quickly, sixteen in a room, eight sets of bunks. All of them were empty, white starched sheets pulled stiffly against the mattresses, pillows gray and flat. The girls could have slept here last night, or last year—there was no way to know.

Natasha looked back to find Clint fingering one of the silver sets of handcuffs on the bedframe, something dark and unreadable in his eyes. At her motion, he stepped away, and they exited the room together. There were three more dorm rooms, each identical to the last, and Natasha found herself subconsciously counting the steps to the refectory. Eighty. Just like she knew it would be.

This is why Alya had put it underground. So it could be _exact_.

The refectory was still and silent, metal tables with long benches bolted into the floor. The serving counter where they had dished out watery _okroshka_ and thick slices of bread and creamy _borscht_ and the occasional _pelmeni_. The _pirozhki_ Elena had loved, the _pierogi_ Marina had stolen from Natalia’s plate.

“Let’s keep moving,” Natasha said.

“I hate this,” Clint said as they moved onward.

“You knew where I grew up. How I grew up.”

“It’s different to hear about it than to…see it,” he murmured. He tore his eyes away from the small desks of a classroom as they passed. “Is that _Snow White_?”

“Yeah. To practice our accents. And as part of the brainwashing.”

“…Creepy.”

_Just wait_ , Natasha wanted to tell him, but couldn’t quite make her mouth work. They were approaching another room now, one that was different from all the rest, and Natasha stopped in front of the door, stomach roiling and a cold sweat breaking out at the nape of her neck. It was an exact replica. Of course this would be here. Maybe he’d even used it, after the old Room was discontinued. He’d known who Diana Sokolova was, after all. 

“What’s this room?” Clint asked, moving to trace his fingers over the words next to the door. ****

**ЗИМНИЙ СОЛДАТ**

“Oh.” The word was heavy on his breath, and he looked back at her with concern. “We don’t have to go in.”

“It’s fine.” She walked past him, their shoulders brushing, and tried the door. “It was a long time ago.”

“Doesn’t mean I would want to wander back into the circus tent where Barney decided it would be a fun game for him and his buddies to put out cigarettes on my chest because I didn’t want to be their pet pickpocket anymore,” Clint replied, but made no move to stop her as she pushed it open. The room was dimly lit, a dresser and desk off to one side and a large four-poster king bed in the middle, draped in dark red sheets. The bed loomed large in front of her, her heart pounding, and the more she stared the more she could see his outline atop the mattress, rising silently to meet her, cold blue eyes boring into her soul.

“This is where…” Clint seemed unable to finish the sentence.

“I was fourteen,” Natasha said distantly. She tore her gaze away from the bed. “I don’t… I understand recreating the other stuff for her new Red Room, but this? None of us have good memories here.”

“This is some fucked up shit,” Clint said. “Just like Alya.” He touched her shoulder, barely, and it took everything in her not to flinch away. “Natasha. Should we move on?” She nodded, allowing him to lead her out of the room again, back to the hallway outside where the air didn’t seem quite as chilled and made less efforts to choke her as she drew it in shakily.“I don’t know how you chased him for months,” Clint said. “I don’t know how you…”

“You were missing.”

“I don’t know how you can look at him now. And just hand him over to Rogers for rehabilitation…”

“He didn’t have a choice,” Natasha said softly. “No more than we did.”

Clint grunted his acknowledgement of her words, scuffing the ground with his boot. “All right, let’s speed this up. I want both of us out of here. You know this place—where’s Alya most likely to be hiding?”

Natasha opened her mouth to say she didn’t know, except she did. “Madame B’s office.”

“Bad memories?”

“Not especially.”

“Great. Let’s go there.” Clint turned around as if to march off before realizing he didn’t know which way he was going. “Uh, where is it?”

“Down one level,” Natasha answered. They made their way back to the stairs in silence, acutely aware of the oddness that they’d met no resistance since going underground, hadn’t seen a single soul since going down here. It was more of the same on the next floor, more classrooms and silent, warped Disney movies and a few of the less maniacal-looking medical labs, all surgical implements and sterile white tables. “This way,” Natasha muttered, making a right turn.

“Natalia?”

They both whipped around, gun and bow rising in unison, pointing at the little face that peeked out of one of the open doorways. The girl slid out into the open, pale eyes never leaving hers. She couldn’t have been more than eight. “Are you Natalia?” she asked again, raising a knife that shone silver against her gray Red Room tunic. The knife turned over in her small palm, facing backwards with her hand wrapped around the handle—a fighting stance.

Clint was already moving forward, wrapping his hand around the girl’s wrist and using pure strength to wrench the knife out of her grasp, disarming her. Natasha holstered the gun and raised her wrist instead, Widow’s Bite’s at the ready—the girl could sleep it off until they had time to come back and collect her, that was safest for everyone involved—

“Are you Natalia?” a new voice asked from behind them, high and childlike. Natasha and Clint spun around to see another child emerging.

“Natalia?” A third, a girl around Lila’s age with dark brown hair.

“Natalia?”

“Are you Natalia?” Girls were appearing on both sides of them now, some with knives, some not, but it was not the weapons that was causing the horror rising thick and fast within Natasha’s chest as their voices, her _name_ , was echoed on all sides.

“Natalia?”

The first girl smiled at her, still within Clint’s grip: a cold thing that never reached her eyes. “Love is for children, Natalia.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whaaaaat? A cliffhanger??? 
> 
> Oops.


	42. Chapter 42

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha gets a new assignment at Stark Industries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fucking love this one. Hope you do too :)

_“This isn’t my first rodeo, Mr. Stark. Just stick to the official statement, and soon, this will all be behind you.”  
_ _“Agent Coulson? I just wanted to say thank you very much for all of your help.”  
_ _“That’s what we do. You’ll be hearing from us.”  
_ _“From the Strategic Homeland—”  
_ _“Just call us S.H.I.E.L.D.”_

Past.

Natasha and Clint sat in a small conference room in S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ. Clint’s feet were propped up on the table as he leaned back in his chair; Natasha had his hand-drawn sketch of the air ducts on level three that she was poring over.

The door whirred, unlocking, and they both looked up to see Coulson entering, wearing his usual crisp suit and tie, a manila folder tucked against his chest. He stopped in the doorway, staring at them both. “You’re early.”

“We’re professionals,” Natasha said.

“Uh-huh.” Coulson allowed the door to close behind him. “Who am I going to need to talk off the ledge this time once they’ve realized what you’ve done?” He sighed. “Please, not another plastic spider in Agent Sitwell’s desk.”

“Hey, that was _hilarious_ ,” Clint said, removing his feet from the tabletop with a grin. “He screamed. _And_ caused Karpowski next to him to spill coffee all over herself, so it was a two-fer.”

Natasha was smiling, but Coulson looked close enough to an aneurysm that she took pity on him. She held up the napkin, inked-on map notwithstanding. “We just got lunch.”

Clint sighed, but clearly agreed to take pity on their poor handler as well. “Had to get there early for Taco Tuesday.”

Coulson approached her, then plucked the napkin out of her fingers. He looked down at the map. “You know, one of these days you’re going to fall through the ceiling.”

“Ten bucks I take out a cadet,” Clint said to Natasha.

She smirked. “All right. Ten bucks on a S.H.I.E.L.D. tech because he was wandering around dead to the world with his headphones on.”

“If you cause structural or aesthetic damage to this building,” Coulson said, “ _you will be paying for it out of your salary_. Understood, Agent Barton?”

“Yes, sir.” Clint said, still grinning. He sat forward, putting on his best ‘attentive’ face. “You scheduled a briefing for us, sir?”

“Right.” Coulson handed them each a manila folder of moderate thickness.

“We have a mission?” Clint asked. “I was supposed to be leaving tomorrow for the Farm.” Natasha was only half-listening, her attention turned to the folder. It was stamped with an older version of the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo—this agency went through logos and rebranding campaigns like Clint went through pizza—and was marked for Level 8 eyes only.

**AVENGERS INITIATIVE  
** **PROJECT OUTLINE**

“No, you’re still cleared, barring any emergency,” Coulson told him. “This was declassified for the both of you by Fury, for Agent Romanoff’s assignment while you’re gone.”

“What is it, exactly?” Natasha asked, flipping through the pages.

“An idea. Fury had it back in 1995. The Council wasn’t a fan, so it was put on hold for a while. Now, given recent events, Fury wants to take another look at it. See if it’s viable.”

She looked up from the file. “A highly specialized team. With…unconventional…skillsets.”

“If we can find them, and successfully recruit them. Heroes.”

“The ‘Avengers’? Isn’t that a little extra?” Clint scoffed. “What exactly are these people avenging?”

“It was named for someone Fury and I had contact with back in the day. She would have qualified, if she had been able to stick around,” Coulson smiled. “But that’s classified.”

“Right,” Clint rolled his eyes.

“She was, you know, alien,” Coulson told them, nonchalant. “Sort of. Long story.”

“And classified,” Natasha said with narrowed eyes, refusing to take the bait. “So, what, Fury wants us to analyze the program? Find people that fit the profile?”

“Or we _are_ the people.” Clint looked at her, and Natasha saw her own expression of distaste mirrored on his face. She might be doing some good at S.H.I.E.L.D. now—or perhaps, just less bad—but there was no universe in which she was a ‘hero.’ Too much red for that. “We’re good, sir. As STRIKE Team Delta. It’s an honor and all, but we’re happy with our reputation where it is. No way.”

“Good, it wasn’t an offer,” Coulson deadpanned.

“So why are you telling us?” Natasha asked. “And what does it have to do with my mission?”

Their handler took a deep breath. “One of our most _well-known_ primary candidates for the Initiative has begun behaving erratically,” Coulson revealed. “Well, more erratically than usual. Our analysis has him as ill. We need to know if that’s true, and if so, how ill.”

“Well-known?” Clint asked, still stuck on that first part.

“Tony Stark. Fancies himself Iron Man. You may have heard of him.”

Natasha laughed. “ _Stark_? As in, the ex-weapons developer flying around the world in a tin can.”

“Primary objective: confirm our intel about his illness; secondary goal: get a profile on Stark and assess his suitability for the Avengers Initiative. The length of the mission will obviously depend on how successful you are at getting the info on Stark, but you can expect to be embedded for at least a month. He’s not an easy man to get close to.”

“Undercover,” Clint gave her a look. “Should be fun. Corporate espionage style.”

Natasha’s lip twitched, but she closed the file folder. “Shouldn’t you be doing this?” Natasha questioned, looking at Coulson. “You have the existing relationship to the target. You couldn’t just ask him?”

“Stark knows about my affiliation with S.H.I.E.L.D., and to keep me at arms length.” Coulson looked rather resigned. “You, he won’t see coming.”

“They never do,” Clint said dreamily, giving her a wink.

* * *

Natalie Rushman was a former model. Natalie Rushman was a paralegal and a notary. Natalie Rushman spoke five languages. Natalie Rushman could name expensive whiskeys by the taste and talk luxury sports cars or particle physics for at least the length of several dinner conversations.

Natalie Rushman would be very appealing to Tony Stark, once she finally got close enough to meet him.

She was early for her interview, because Natalie was always early. Not I-am-crazy-or-desperate early, but the kind of early that spoke to a well-organized life. Her nails were freshly and perfectly manicured, her pantsuit black and ironed, her heels shined. The blouse she wore underneath was a dark purple, with a perfectly professional slit down the front, stylish but giving nothing away. On her lap was her briefcase, one out of a S.H.I.E.L.D. vault that made it look in good condition but certainly not new, and her phone was in her hand, giving her the plausible deniability of something to do while she waited.

Of course, what she was really doing was taking in her first glimpse of the inside of Stark Industries Headquarters. The security. The culture. How to operate the coffee machine. Anything and everything Natalie would need to rise within the ranks here, or at least get noticed by those on top, given her time constraints.

And anything else she needed, she could engineer.

“Miss Rushman?” a voice called, and Natalie looked up from her phone, coming completely to attention. “Ms. Arbogast will see you now.”

Natalie greeted her interviewer—a thirties brunette with short-cropped hair—with a smile and a firm handshake. The entirety of it went well, because of course it did: Natalie was perfectly qualified for this position, almost as if she had been designed for it.

Funny how that worked out.

After the interview, Natalie returned to her newly rented Los Angeles apartment. Natasha logged down her observations about Stark Industries and went to work installing the last pieces of her cover, double-checking that the desired search results were readily available on the internet. This had been an easy one for the S.H.I.E.L.D. techs—she actually had done a fair bit of modeling in several cities between 2005 and 2007 for an on-and-off S.H.I.E.L.D. op, though under a different name. S.H.I.E.L.D. had had them scrubbed post-mission—couldn’t have potential marks recognizing her from a photoshoot, and they had been the type of photoshoots to linger on some dark corner of the internet or another—but they served their purpose once again now.

Natalie also went grocery shopping, and met ‘friends’ for drinks—Bobbi and her new husband Lance Hunter, who didn’t quite seem to be getting the whole _undercover_ part of this operation—because Bobbi was apparently working out of California now. To Natalie, they were old college friends. Natalie had gone to UCLA—giving her local ties—before transferring to Georgetown.

Three days later she got the official offer, and two days after that she was walking into Stark Industries HQ, receiving her official ID badge, and being shown to her cubicle. The legal work she could handle—she’d had one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s own legal department give her a rundown before she left New York—but it was more her coworkers she was interested in, staying abreast of the gossip both at the company coffee machine and eavesdropping with the S.H.I.E.L.D. tech provided by Coulson.

So it was a week and a half in—a week and a half of Natalie making herself indispensable—that she heard the news. Tony Stark was transferring control of his company to his former assistant Virginia Potts, and a notary public was needed to oversee the paperwork. The rest of the division was vaguely flabbergasted—who was this Potts woman, anyway? what were her qualifications besides years of babysitting Stark?—but Natalie smiled to herself inside her cubicle. She, of course, had known about the upcoming transfer since her second day at the company. But she had her channels.

And she knew better than to underestimate the soon-to-be CEO.

Virginia “Pepper” Potts. Thirty-eight. Single, no kids, never married. Entirely career-oriented, no family ties in the area and a business degree from a small school in the midwest. Previously employed by Stark Industries in accounting until she was plucked out by Stark for an unknown reason and made his personal assistant, a position she had held for over seven years. Every press conference, every board meeting, every tabloid photo…Pepper Potts was there, off to the side, or else cleaning up the mess afterward with a terrifying efficiency. Since she had begun her research into Stark for this mission, it had been clear that the way to Tony Stark was through Pepper Potts.

Getting on Potts’s radar had taken a backburner, however, with the advent of this new opportunity. Natasha had a new target. Samantha Carlisle was her name—the notary the head of the legal department had chosen to deliver the paperwork. The decision made sense: a five-year tenure at Stark Industries, a professional demeanor, trustworthy and not easily star-struck; Natasha had nothing against her. Unfortunately, she would have to go.

Poison. Ivan had taught her that, although his teachings were more about identifying, growing, and brewing it than it was how to slip it into a coworker’s coffee the morning of the big event. An hour later, Samantha was headed home hoping not to have another fit of vomiting on the metro, and Natalie had a new task.

“It’ll be a bit of a drive,” the boss warned her. “Show your badge at the security gate. And Mr. Stark…well, try not to let him get under your skin.”

“I’m sure I can handle it,” Natalie told him, just eager enough to believable for an ambitious young woman at her age but never letting her decorum waver.

“All right. I’ll pass your information on to Ms. Potts. They’re expecting you at noon, so you’d better leave now.”

Natalie did, exiting the building with the documents in her arms. Once inside her car in the parking garage, she checked over the forms themselves, making sure they were correct and that she wouldn’t embarrass herself in front of Stark. The leather portfolio, the ink pad, her notary materials… She set them all in her passenger seat and pulled out of her spot, navigating out of the garage before getting on the 405 toward Malibu.

Pulling up to the vehicle entrance to Stark’s mansion, Natalie took a moment for appreciation before showing her Stark Industries ID at the gate. After scanning it, the man working the booth picked up a phone and called into the house. “Ms. Potts? I have a Natalie Rushman here for you.” He paused, listening. “I’ll send her through.” He set the phone back on its hook. “You can park anywhere in the loop, and leave your keys on the dash. The valet will be right out to park it for you. After that, you can head inside the large glass doors and take the elevator down one floor. Make an immediate right—Mr. Stark and Ms. Potts are currently in the gym.”

“Thank you,” Natalie said, giving the man a smile as she took her ID back. Rolling up the window with one hand, she sent the car ambling through the checkpoint and towards the large white building. It was elegant and expensive and grand, at least as far as American architecture went. And even such a short time of having her window down had let in the scent of the ocean, clean and salty and just over the cliffside.

She pulled the car up along the main entrance as instructed, checking her outfit and makeup in the mirror and reapplying her lipstick. On second thought, she discarded the blazer in the back seat of the car in favor of just the tight white blouse she had been wearing underneath it, coupled with her black slacks. She wanted to look comfortable in their presence and in the mansion, not like she was being overly formal in a bid to impress. Natalie gathered up the paperwork and other materials and slid out of the car, closing the door with her foot. Showtime.

Having studied the blueprints, Natasha did not get lost as soon as she stepped through the front doors, though for Natalie’s sake she appeared to, pausing every so often as if considering the correct way to go. A short elevator ride and a walk down a hallway filled with tasteful art pieces later, she emerged in the home gymnasium indicated by the security officer. It was less a home gym and more a spacious, airy room outfitted with a full-size boxing ring, in which Tony Stark and Happy Hogan, his driver and bodyguard, circled each other. Stark was barely recognizable in a black hoodie and Hogan in full boxing gear, but Natasha had done her homework—especially when they both turned to face her.

Natalie kept her face expressionless, pausing slightly under their attention before continuing on her way, casually dismounting the steps into the room proper. She walked immediately toward Pepper Potts, who was standing next to a large window with a view of the ocean outside. “I promise you, this is the only time I will ask you to sign away your company,” Potts said to Stark in a half-exasperated, half-affectionate tone as she approached, and Natasha took a liking to her. Natalie flipped open the leather portfolio open. Giving her a polite smile, Potts accepted the pen held out to her—a Montblanc White Solitaire ballpoint that the woman was partial to, and one that Natasha was definitely going to keep or hock after this mission given how much it had cost.

“I need you to initial each box,” Natalie requested, utterly professional in her demeanor. Natalie asked multi-billionaires for their signatures on life-changing documents every day. She held it as Potts signed, hearing the sounds of Stark and Hogan resuming their match. Natalie looked up at a loud _clang_ against the edge of the arena.

“That’s it. I’m done,” Stark said, handily beaten and taking a swig of something green from his water bottle. Natasha noted that for mention in her report—a man that ate cheeseburgers as often as he did wasn’t often so into kale smoothies when all was fine with his health. He pointed at her. “What’s your name, lady?”

“Rushman,” she provided, looking not at all askance at the question. “Natalie Rushman.”

“Front and center,” Stark said, gesturing at her, and Natasha could have smirked. “Come into the church.” She did not move, however, deferring to her soon-to-be new boss.

“No, you’re seriously not gonna ask…” Potts shifted, obviously done with the situation—the situation, as always, being Tony Stark—and Natasha feigned slight discomfort, a plastered on smile.

“If it pleases the court, which it does.”

“I’m sorry, he’s very eccentric…”

“It’s no problem,” Natalie assured her, closing the folder again and making her way towards Stark. He lifted the ropes of the boxing ring for her, and she stepped through, ducking under and coming up gracefully in a manner that highlighted her ass. _This_ was what she’d worn these slacks for, after all. She held his eye contact as he took another swig from the bottle, waiting.

Stark turned to Hogan. “Can you, uh, give her a lesson?”

“No problem,” Hogan said, and she shifted her attention to him as Stark exited the boxing ring.

“Who is she?” she could hear him asking Potts, and she hid another smirk as she set the folder aside, facing Happy with her hands held lightly on her hips, well aware she was on display.

“ _She_ is from legal,” Potts informed him. “And _she_ is potentially a very expensive sexual harassment lawsuit if you keep ogling her like that.”

“I need a new assistant, boss,” Stark said. Yes…yes, he did.

“You ever boxed before?” Hogan asked her.

Both Natalie and Natasha smiled. “I have, yes.”

“What, like, Tae Bo? Booty Boot Camp? Crunch? Something like that?”

She kept her expression enigmatic, and was saved from replying by Stark himself. “How do I spell your name, Natalie?”

Perfect. Hook, line, and as soon as he Googled her, sinker. She obligingly spelled it for him, then turned her face back towards Happy.

“Well, I’ll show you the ropes,” the larger man said, as if they hadn’t been interrupted. She slipped her shoes off, then stood in front of him. “Arms up.” She mimicked his movements. “Keep your fists in front of you, close to your face to protect it, see?”

Natalie nodded, giving him a smile, before twisting her body back toward Potts and Stark, who were currently arguing over her language skills. She pretended to be distracted, letting her guard drop.

“Rule number one, never take your eyes off your opponent,” Happy said, reaching for her. His boxing glove extended toward her—probably just to give her a tap, but it really didn’t matter at this point, did it—and she grabbed his wrist with her left hand, jerking it to the side and knocking him off balance. She leaped, using his knee as a springing-off point, and a second later, her legs were over his shoulders, throwing her momentum and body weight forward to crash him expertly into the mat. Her calves remained around his neck in a scissor hold even as Potts and Stark both cried out in alarm. She gave him another few seconds to struggle before letting him up, quickly adjusting her belt and blouse as if this wasn’t something she did every day.

Natalie hurried swiftly off the mat, as if trying to cover her lack of professionalism. Stark rang a victory bell. “Looks like a TKO to me.”

She stepped right up to Stark once she had slipped her shoes back on and picked up the leather portfolio. “I need your impression.”

He seemed confused, but went with it. “You have a quiet reserve…I don’t know, you have an old soul?”

Natalie flipped the folder back open, allowing her lips to curve upward minutely. “I meant your fingerprint.”

“Right.” He pressed his thumb into the ink pad she provided for him, then onto the form, never breaking eye contact. His were coal black, moderately bloodshot but dark and alive and more intelligent than he made himself out to be in casual conversation.

“So, how are we doing?” Potts said, stepping close enough that she was almost between them and shattering their moment to pieces. Protective, or possessive? Interesting.

“Great, just wrapping up here,” Stark said. he pointed to his completed fingerprint, the signature required to sign his company—his life’s work, and his father’s legacy—away. “Hey. You’re the boss.”

Natalie snapped the portfolio closed, looking to her target for her dismissal now that she had his attention, rather than Potts. “Will that be all, Mr. Stark?”

“No,” he said, and Natasha knew she’d won.

“Yes, that will be all, Ms. Rushman,” Potts cut in, and Natalie turned away. “Thank you very much.”

She could still hear them as she left the gym. “I want one.”

“ _No_.”

* * *

Natalie Rushman was good at her job.

She was good at arranging cars and flights and meals, at changing tables last minute and providing the names of tech billionaires he happened to meet on the street and making sure Stark knew of his schedule for the day, if not always making him follow it.

Natalie Rushman was good at her job, but it required nearly every spy skill Natasha possessed, and her admiration for the venerable Pepper Potts continued to grow.

Of course, she was also using her spy skills for actual spying, but neither Stark nor Pepper needed to know that now that she had nearly complete access to Stark Industries and the mansion in Malibu. Illness, check. Palladium poisoning, check. S.H.I.E.L.D. labs had whipped something up for that faster than she had thought possible, showing how much this little mission meant to Fury.

Well, that and the fact he showed up to talk with Stark himself. Although maybe that had also been for the donuts.

With her true persona revealed, to Tony at least, Natasha’s job had gotten both harder and easier, as all she was really doing now was serving as Potts’s personal assistant and waiting for Stark to figure out how to not die on his own. Mostly, that meant doing paperwork in her new high-rise office at Stark Headquarters.

Midway through writing a lengthy memo on any legal loopholes to get the board off Potts’s back after the Monaco fiasco and the U.S. government’s remanding of one of the Iron Man suits, there was a knock at her door. “Come in,” Natalie called, minimizing the document on her computer and setting her face into a pleasant repose in anticipation of her boss dropping in.

Clint edged through the doorway, shutting the large oak doors quickly behind him. “Hey, Nat.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked in lieu of a greeting, though a wide smile soon replaced her confusion. “You’re supposed to be at home.”

“Yeah, well, reassignment,” he said. “New Mexico, or so I’ve heard. You got any coffee?”

She raised an eyebrow—not out of surprise, but more of principle. “It’s four in the afternoon.”

“You say that like you don’t know me.”

Natasha rolled her eyes, but got up from her desk and walked to the fancy coffeemaker perched on top of the mini-fridge. “Have you suddenly become too good for half-day-old coffee while I’ve been away?”

“Nope. Hit me,” he said. She poured it into a mug for him, then pulled the caramel creamer out of the fridge and added a generous amount of that as well.

“Ooh, nice, you even have the good stuff,” Clint said happily. “Wait…why do you have the good stuff. You knew I would stop by?” Natasha remained tight-lipped, handing him the cup. “You bastard, you like it too!” he crowed.

“Do not. It’s disgusting.”

“Then explain,” he challenged.

She couldn’t. “You’ve corrupted me,” Natasha sighed, dropping into the seat at her desk again. He grinned. “Why are you here again?” she asked.

“Because I have something you have to see.” He came around her desk, phone in hand, and showed her the screen. He pressed play, and tinny ballet music filled the room, a little girl in a pink tutu filling most of the screen. The music rang familiar in Natasha’s ears, but it was Lila that captured her attention, moving in clumsy but adorable assemblés and pliés and relevés. When the music ended, she ran at the camera, face open and joyful and excited. The camera jostled and the video ended. Clint looked at her proudly. “Lila’s first ballet recital.”

Natasha smiled, real and genuine. “She’s amazing.”

Clint laughed. “No, she’s not, but she’s not the worst in her class so that’s something. Anyway, I know how much ballet factored into your childhood and how sad you were at the thought of missing her first, so…”

“Thank you,” Natasha said. He was right, she had wanted to be a Bolshoi ballerina as a child, had snuck out of the Room just to watch the real ballerinas practice. She remembered being excited when Madame B announced they would be learning it as part of their training, and remembered how the woman had twisted it into something horrible—practice without stopping, dancing until their feet had run red with blood, knowing that it would only be so much worse if they halted or fell. But watching four-year-old Lila do it, young and sweet and innocent… That was how ballet was meant to be experienced.

She smiled at him again, something more open than she’d done in weeks while undercover at Stark Industries. He appeared pleased with himself but quickly played it off. “So, how is—?”

There was a swift knock and the door opened behind them, Ms. Potts and Happy Hogan coming through. Natalie once again surged to the surface, modulating her expression. They both stopped at the sight of the stranger at Natalie’s desk. “Oh, I didn’t realize you had company?” Potts said, raising an eyebrow at her.

“He’s from IT,” Natalie said. Not her best work. Clint had been blue-screen-of-death’d more times than she could count.

“Is there a problem with the computer?” Potts asked, concerned.

Natalie smiled. “Not at all. The wifi was down a couple floors below and he just wanted to check that ours was working up here.”

“It is,” Clint supplied.

Potts nodded, but Hogan still looked suspicious. “Buddy, can I see your badge?”

“Left it at my desk on sub-level 3,” Clint replied, apologetic. “I can go get it, if you want…?”

“No, it’s fine,” Potts waved him off. “That’ll be all, thank you.”

Clint left, winking at Natasha from behind their backs.

“At his desk,” Hogan muttered. “I think we need to have another talk with the head of security, that Michael Richardson. It is not secure at all for employees to be wandering through the building without proper identification.”

“I can set up a meeting with Mr. Richardson, if you’d like,” Natalie offered helpfully.

“Maybe when everything calms down,” Potts replied.

“Be careful,” Hogan warned Natalie. “You can’t always trust everyone walking around the office. Corporate spies, you know.”

“Of course,” Natalie nodded. She turned to Potts, rising from her chair in readiness. “Did you need something else?”

“I have an emergency meeting with the board in an hour about Tony’s missing suit, and I’d like the head of our legal department to come with. Let him know and have him meet me at the car.”

“Of course,” Natalie agreed.

“After that, there’s the interview with the news stations—”

“CNN, then MSNBC and Fox,” she supplied.

“Cancel Fox, we don’t need that right now,” Potts said, beginning to move away toward the door. “And tell the other two I’ll be running thirty minutes late, in case they want to reschedule.”

Natalie smiled. “Right away, Ms. Potts.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any and all feedback appreciated! I love hearing from you all as I bring this to a close <3


	43. Chapter 43

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha, Clint, and the rest of the Avengers storm Alya’s compound, part two.

_Natasha assembled the Avengers to go after Alya Naumenka and her new Red Room program. Unfortunately, Alya had a few more surprises in store._

Present.

“Natalia?”

“Natalia?”

“Are you Natalia?” The children shuffled closer, surrounding Clint and Natasha now on all sides.

“Love is for children, Natalia.”

“Welcome home, Natalia.” Natasha spun at the new, adult voice to see Alya standing at the end of the hall, at least four novitiates between them. Foreign, clammy fingers touched her arm, tugged at her suit, reached up to pull at her hair. Bile rose thick and fast in Natalia’s—Natasha’s, she was _Natasha_ —throat. Only a tug at the gun in her holster jerked her into action, slapping away the intruding hand and planting her own across the girl’s collarbone, knocking her backward onto the floor. A brief flash of surprise and pain crossed the girl’s face as she hit the ground before being quickly replaced by that strange blankness again as she rose to her feet, but seeing that more than anything settled Natasha. That was good. That meant they were following Alya, not being controlled in some newer, more sinister way.

That meant she could still save them.

“Back up,” she warned the rest of the girls, cocking her wrist in readiness to fire her Widow’s Bites. Non-lethals only, she promised herself. Because she was an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., an Avenger now. Because she was capable of doing good, even if it wasn’t the simplest option. Because Natalia wasn’t all she was anymore.

A swift movement to her right caused her to twist to look at him, but it was just Clint knocking another girl in the head with his outstretched bow, a much lighter blow than he would normally deal but still one that sent the girl who had approached him sprawling. The rest of them stopped, still staring.

“Girls,” Alya chided in Russian. “Say hello to your oldest sister.” The words were harsh, mocking, and Natasha knew the woman intended to make her pay for referring to them as sisters before.

“ _Zdravstvuyte, sestra_ ,” they chorused, eyes never leaving Natasha.

Now that the girls’ progression had stopped, Natasha turned her attention to Alya. The woman wore another gray pantsuit reminiscent of Madame B, and she stood favoring the left side where Natasha had stabbed her. As if she could tell what she was thinking, Alya hefted her weight to lean on the opposite side, no vestige of pain visible in her cold countenance. The girls at her command were all young, ten or eleven at most, and Natasha wondered where the older ones were.

“You remember the stories I’ve told you about Natalia,” Alya continued. “She was Madame B’s favorite. When you graduate, if you are good, you become an operative. If you are great, you are a Widow. If you are the best… There is only ever one Black Widow. Until she turned traitor and left her _sestry_ for dead.” Alya gave her a hateful look. “Girls, why don’t you show Natalia and her _amerikanskiy drug_ what you have learned,” she suggested sweetly. “It’s advancement day, after all.”

“Alya, no,” Natasha said, even as the girls moved obediently to pair up by age and height. She raised her Bites once more, pointing them at Alya. Immediately, every girl with a knife—a little over half, mostly the older ones, Natasha noted—raised it to their own throat. Natasha heard her own heartbeat in her ears; Clint was stiff beside her. Would they follow through? Had Alya been enhanced during her time in the Room; would she be neutralized in one hit? Was she fast enough to disarm them, once Alya was down? She should take the shot anyway, and end Alya’s nightmare for good, even if a few sacrifices had to be made. That’s what Natalia would have done, with little thought of consequence.

Except a decision like that had created Alya in the first place. She’d gone down this road before. And last time…well, last time she hadn’t had a friend to watch her back.

Natasha slowly lowered her wrist, watching the small blades lower as well. Clint’s gaze met hers, and she knew he was thinking the exact same thing as her, the way only long-time partners could.

The Black Widow was on top of the first knife-bearing girl in an instant, knocking the weapon out of her hand and clocking her across the face hard enough for her to drop. On the other side of the hallway, Clint was wrestling the knife away from another girl, and Natasha shot a blue bolt of electricity at the one behind him, collapsing her to the floor as well. A third ran at her brandishing her own blade, and Natasha sidestepped the admittedly well-executed slash at her neck and hooked her foot around the girl’s ankle. She plucked the knife from her grip as she too tumbled to the floor. There was a flash of gray at her back and something hard and solid impacted her lower spine, knocking her off her feet.

Natasha’s skull impacted the ground with a _thunk_ that caused her vision to go black for a second. Her right arm caught underneath her, crushed under her own body weight and it was all she could do not to pass out for a second. Then her new assailant entered her vision and something in Natasha revived, the sight of a Red Room _odnoklassnik_ standing over her injecting her muscles with a new desperation to _get up_ , _survive_ , forcing her otherwise deadened limbs to pull herself up and away. Natasha staggered to her feet as the young woman attacked again, swift punches aimed at her ribs and neck to wear down her defenses. As she dodged and blocked, she could see Clint was under attack as well from another student, undoubtedly older than the knife-bearing children surrounding them but still definitely a student. Natasha’s head was clearing, her motions becoming fluid once more, the tide of the fight inexorably turning in her favor. The girl was well-trained, that much was clear, but Natasha had years of experience on her. Aiming a feint of a kick towards the girl’s sternum, she spun around her instead, yanking the girl’s neck into a choke hold from behind. The girl struggled as soon as she felt Natasha’s arm close around her throat, but her fingers scrabbled ineffectually against Natasha’s hold, her tac suit buffeting the desperate blows from the girl’s elbows. Natasha felt a pressure at her hip and then—

_Click._

Natasha swallowed, frozen, as something hard and metallic pressed against her skull. Alya had a gun. Not just any gun. _Her_ gun.

“Drop it,” Alya warned, and Natasha’s brow furrowed. One minute Alya was lambasting her for abandoning Red Room students, now she was referring to one of them as ‘it.’ Then she realized Alya had said the words in English, and she slowly turned her head to see Clint with his bow extended, caught halfway through nocking an arrow. He met her eyes, fear reflected in them at the sight of her with a gun to her head, but he only closed his fingers tighter around the arrow shaft.

Natasha’s gaze fell to the arrow and the golden band around the metal tip, delineating its type. Her chest swept outward, lungs fulling with as much air as she could possibly take, even as her mouth clamped closed and her eyes squeezed shut.

_Tsssssssssssssssssssssst!_

The coughing was almost instantaneous, and as soon as it started Natasha jerked away from the gun against her head, releasing her captive and ducking to put as much space between her and the weapon as possible.

_Bang. Bang._ Her ears rang with the shots but no part of her body blossomed with pain. Nor did she hear the telltale grunt of Clint getting injured either, so she kept moving, scrambling away down the hallway before she dared open her eyes. Natasha regretted the action immediately as they began to smart and water but she forced them to stay open. Alya and her students stood in the middle of the red cloud that had taken over that section of the hallway, most of them doubled over, coughing, rubbing at their streaming eyes, or groping around blindly.

“No,” Alya hissed, barely more than a croak that Natasha doubted anyone else heard over the cries of pain. She raised her wrist, quickly wiping away some of the water obscuring her vision with the sleeve of her tac suit, then fired it, blue electricity arcing outward to hit Alya in the shoulder. Her nose began to sting, then felt like it was on fire, but Natasha gritted her teeth through it and kept holding her breath. She shot Alya again, the woman’s body spasming on the ground, then began to pull the students—children—closest to her out of the haze.

“Stark,” Clint’s hoarse voice crackled in her earpiece. “Sub-level 3, northwest side. Everyone else, would recommend gas masks before you head on in.”

“On my way,” Stark responded. Clint was copying her movements now, his vague outline wading further and further into the red haze to yank stumbling students out of the worst of the blast. Finally, when all of them were safely huddled coughing in the further part of the hallway, Natasha sprinted for air, her lungs about to burst. She took deep, sweeping breaths, lips and every other exposed orifice stinging, but she was not doubled over so she counted that as a win.

A blast tore through the ceiling at the end of the hall, pieces of rubble raining down on the thankfully empty space. The Iron Man armor landed with a _thunk_ in the dust, eye slits glowing and repulsors at the ready. “Get them out of here,” Natasha ordered in a raspy voice, gesturing at the girls. Iron Man nodded, scooping up two of them with his metal arms and zooming back up through the large hole in the ceiling.

“Agent Romanoff, I am currently attempting to access the building’s ventilation system remotely,” JARVIS spoke in her ear. A few moments later, the sound of rushing aid echoed above her head, and the red mist began to dissipate as it was sucked up into the vents.

“Thanks, JARVIS,” Clint said, his outline becoming clearer and clearer as the majority of the mist was sucked away. His eyes were red and raw, and Natasha was sure hers didn’t look much better. “You good?” he barely had time to ask before she was wrapping her arms around his middle. After a moment of surprise, he moved to embrace her too, but her hands were already slipping into the back of his waistband, fingers clasping the 9 mil tucked there. Natasha stepped back, pointing it downward at Alya’s head. Clint’s eyes met hers, confusion within them, but Natasha pulled the trigger anyway, her hand jerking slightly with the recoil. When she looked down, the woman was no longer moving, staring sightlessly at Natasha below the bullet hole centered in her forehand, exuding scarlet liquid onto the floor.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“A little. One less ghost from the past.” She turned to see Iron Man reappearing, grabbing a couple more of the girls, a few of whom seemed to be beginning to recover. “Good thinking with the arrow.”

“Well, taking down Alya using our first brainchild seemed appropriate,” he joked.

Natasha gave him the ghost of a smile. “To be fair, I was right; a fart arrow would have been a lot less useful in this situation.” She removed three first set of cuffs from her belt, slipping them over the wrists of one of the older students and tightening them to be flush against the young woman’s skin. As she moved onto the next, a black rope was tossed through the hole, and Bobbi slid down on it.

“You guys good?” she called as Steve, Thor, and Sif all dropped through sans gear.

“We’re fine,” Natasha answered. “Can you get the rest of them up to the surface? Clint and I will clear the rest of the facility.”

Bobbi nodded. As she reached for the nearest Red Room student, the girl launched herself from the floor, fingernails outstretched and clawing. All three Avengers and both Asgardians moved to help her, but Bobbi had the girl’s arm twisted behind her back and her pepper-spray-coated face pressed against the floor within a second.

Smiling, Natasha jerked her head toward the other end of the hall, and Clint fell in step beside her. They cleared the rest of the rooms on that floor with no other surprises, though Natasha’s gun and Clint’s bow remained up and at the ready at all times. After letting the others know where they were going, they descended the stairs onto the bottom floor, which seemed similarly empty. Somehow, even though it was more of the same—replicas of the unlicensed medical and research labs that had once sprawled beneath the original Red Room complex—some of the chill was gone from the air, now that she knew Alya was dead and gone for good.

“I wouldn’t mess with that,” she warned Clint as he moved to examine one of the large, upright chambers that filled the room they were currently in. “Unless you’re looking to take a three-year nap, that is.”

“Ooh, stasis chamber?” Clint asked. “That’s so sci-fi. And it actually works?”

“Living proof,” Natasha answered. “Maybe not without whatever they pumped me with when I was growing up here, though. Or whatever treatment they gave the Winter Soldier.”

“Which is why he still looks like he’s in his late twenties or early thirties when he was born during World War I,” Clint surmised.

“I think I remember seeing him,” Natasha said. “When I woke up the first time. He was there. He asked who I was, and who _he_ was, before they pulled him away.”

“Messed up,” her partner agreed, but stepped away from the chamber. They both moved on, checking other rooms filled with medical equipment and bottles of unknown liquids and starched white sheets. “We should take some of this back with us,” Clint said. “The research, at least, maybe some samples… Maybe they can figure out what exactly they did to you.”

“Or burn it,” Natasha suggested. At his questioning look, “Humanity doesn’t exactly have the best track record when some nutjob in a lab coat thinks they’ve discovered the next great way to make a super soldier.”

“Touché.” He glanced around. “Leave it for Fury to sort out, level eight eyes only? I’d hate to torch the place only to find out later that they were hiding the cure for cancer or something in here.”

“Fair enough,” she agreed, exiting the lab again. She pointed forward. “It’s just this section left, and then we meet back up with the others.”

“You hear that?” Clint asked, putting an arm out in front of her. Natasha stopped, watching as he made a twisting motion at his ear that she knew was him turning his hearing aids up. He frowned, listening, and then silently signaled at the next room.

“One person? Two?” Natasha signed.

He held up a finger. Probably not guards then. Maybe a Red Room student that had snuck off from the rest, or had had a special mission from Alya.

She readied her left Widow’s Bite, tilting her wrist and bringing it up to the fore along with the gun clasped in her right. Natasha nodded to Clint, who kicked the door open. Slipping past him, Natasha made a quick survey of the room—another medical lab—until she caught a glimpse of something red peeking out from underneath the hospital bed. A lock of red hair, a little pull-on sneaker.

“ _Privyet, malysh_ ,” Natasha called softly, lowering neither of her weapons. “ _Come on out. We’re not here to hurt you._ ”

The little foot wiggled, followed by a knee and and elbow and then the entire girl herself clamoring out from underneath. Bright green eyes stared at Natasha and Clint and back again over the barrel of a gun clutched in tiny fingers, not quite pointed at them, but not quite pointed away, either.

“ _Give me the gun_ ,” Clint said in rough Russian when Natasha failed to. She could only stare at the girl, round cheeks and limbs not quite yet stripped of baby fat—could only stare at _herself_ , because that’s what she was looking at wasn’t it? She’d known around what age she’d been brought to the Red Room, she knew that she had been a child, barely older than a toddler, but to see it…

“I found it,” the girl replied, brows furrowing. “Madame doesn’t like guns. She says they make us sloppy. But I found it, so it’s mine, ‘kay?”

“All right, it’s yours,” Clint agreed easily. “Looks pretty heavy though. Want me to carry it for you?”

“ _Da, pozhaluysta_ ,” she said, holding it out to him. He took it gingerly, ejecting the magazine before tucking it into his waistband. “You have one too,” the girl told Natasha. “Are you here to take me away?”

“Yes,” Natasha breathed, and it rang in her head like a promise. “We’re here to take all of you away.” She activated her Bites, watching the girl crumple and moving to catch her before her little head could hit the floor.

“Want me to—” Clint asked. There was no judgment in his eyes.

“No,” Natasha said, gently putting one arm underneath the girl’s legs and lifting her up, settling her limp body against her chest. “I got her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked it! Only two more chapters to go, the next one from the past to bring everything full circle and then the final one to wrap up any loose threads :)


	44. Chapter 44

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before the dust has even settled from New York, Natasha and Clint have to attend a funeral.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Argh I can't believe we're here. Hope you like this one; I certainly do. 
> 
> Writing music and general soundtrack for this chapter was "Come Home With Me" from the Broadway play _Hadestown _.__

_“Have you ever had someone take your brain and play? Pull you out and send something else in? Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?”  
_ _“You know that I do.”_

Past.

“ _Get him out, Natasha._ ”

“I can’t.”

“Hit me on the head again. Get someone from medical. Some of that drug they thought might work on you back when you were trying to shake your programming. Anything, Nat, please—”

“There’s nothing they can do. You just have to fight it, Clint.”

“Then you should get out of here.”

“You just need to level out.”

“Do I? Is that what I need?”

“Take a deep breath; concentrate on my voice. I’m here. We’re both at the S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse in the Adirondacks. Clint. _Clint_. Breathe. Look around. Tell me what you see.”

“Get out, Nat…”

“Describe your surroundings. You’re here, not there. Ground yourself.”

“Natasha, get out. _Run!_ ”

* * *

She stood with him for the funeral.

It was nice, in a somber, soul-crushing sort of way. Natasha was not a stranger to funerals, and this one was as nice as they went. Not that she cared, because he was dead and gone and of course it didn’t matter to him, but somehow she didn’t care so much that it spiraled all the way back around into caring. He had been a good handler, a good mentor, a good friend. His memory, at least, deserved it.

She stood with Clint for the funeral. Natasha was wearing a black dress she’d pulled out of her closet from some Stark function she’d attended while undercover, Clint his usual suit for any black-tie occasion. They were in the second row—Natasha didn’t like the first, anyway, that was too exposed—Maria Hill to their left and Melinda May to their right. On the other side of the aisle stood the newly christened Avengers, close not because they’d known him well—perhaps with the exception of Stark—but because whatever S.H.I.E.L.D. lackey had planned this was not going to dare put Captain America in the back.

Phil would have loved having Captain America at his funeral anyway.

Clint was stiff beside her, and not in a healthy, jaw-clenched-with-grief sort of a way. Nick Fury spoke at the front, but none of the words seemed to reach her ears, the combination of Clint and this funeral whiting out most of her usual senses. Her fingers twitched tentatively near his, and when he didn’t respond, closed gently around his wrist. She could feel his pulse, feel the strain echoing through every muscle of his body, taut and sore and hated. He didn’t look at her, still facing forward, eyes fixed in one rigid spot. Natasha knew he wasn’t listening to Fury either—Clint liked to look at people when they talked, to let his lip-reading skills augment the hearing aids even when they were fully functional. No, he was staring at the casket instead, a lacquered oak thing draped in an American flag next to a freshly dug grave. Her fingers drifted downwards, unknotting his hardened fist and gradually slotting in between his. His hand was clammy and over-hot, but Natasha held it anyway, until she had to leave.

It should have been him. She knew it, Fury knew it, Clint knew it. It should have been Clint exiting their small row, passing Fury in the aisle. It should have been Clint to stand up there in front of that sea of S.H.I.E.L.D. faces and Avengers and New York City officials that hadn’t even known him and the one cellist, in the front row, who really, really had. It should have been Clint to adjust the microphone and then speak into it, to attest to the type of man Phil Coulson had been and explain how much they both owed him and maybe even tell a funny anecdote, because that’s what their lives with Coulson had been like, more often than not. Fun.

For a Red Room graduate or an abused carnie, that wasn’t nothing. It was a lot.

As it was, Natasha stood in front of the crowd and spoke for about five minutes, a speech she’d written in her head and memorized the day before, the words to which she could not have recalled later if she tried. Clint could have done it better, she knew. Clint had known him longer, had seen him as more friend than handler longer—Clint had always been better than her at this sort of thing. Admitting you liked someone. Admitting you trusted someone. Admitting you missed them when they were gone.

When she was done, Natasha stepped away from the podium and back to Clint, moving to thread her fingers back with his only to find them tucked away, his arms crossed tightly. One more person spoke, a city official bestowing a posthumous Medal of Valor on Coulson’s casket, and then they were lowering him into the ground. They lined up in rows to cast the dirt into the hole, Clint following her lead with rote motions, and then at last broke apart, people no longer confined to rows and lines of misery but free to mingle about with it instead.

With one look at Clint, Natasha knew they were not staying for the wake, and guided him out of the cemetery instead, saying goodbye to no one. Though she pretended not to notice it, the stares of agents stationed on the helicarrier were hot and suspicious on their backs.

“Clint,” she said, once they were back at his apartment. Their building was remarkably unscathed from the invasion, though one just two blocks over was slated to be completely demolished. “Clint, talk to me.”

“What is there to say?” he asked lowly, gutturally, as if the very words had taken all the strength he had left.

“I miss him,” Natasha admitted. “I don’t…I don’t remember if I said that in the speech.”

“You did.”

“You listened,” she said, some part of her vaguely surprised.

“I tried.”

Natasha moved from her position in front of him and sat next to him instead, her hand moving across his rigid shoulders and then rubbing slow circles into his back. She could feel every taut outline of muscle, every ridge of his spine. “He was good to us, Clint.”

“Yeah, he was. Better than we deserved.”

“He never thought that.”

“Well, he should’ve. In the end.” When Natasha was silent, “For me, not you. Considering I as good as killed him.”

“No,” Natasha said harshly, fingernails scraping reflexively against his back. “No, not as good as. You were controlled by Loki, not the other way around.”

“So I was the victim. Just like you were a victim in São Paulo? At the hospital fire? With Ivan’s girls?”

Natasha let the words wash over her, refusing to let herself be drowned in memories of another life. “You’ve been telling me so for years.”

“Yeah, well, now I get why it hasn’t worked.”

“What happened to Coulson was not your fault,” Natasha told him, refusing to let herself be stung by the harshness of his words.

“Maybe not, but I’m still to blame. I was the one telling Loki everything. All of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s passwords, our protocols, our methods…” He looked up, a shiny film coating his eyes. “I shouldn’t even have been at that funeral, Nat. God knows I don’t deserve it. And it’s certainly not safe for me to be…” He made a vague hand gesture in the air.

“Out of the house?”

“I can still feel _him_ , Nat. Hear his voice.”

“Then fight it,” Natasha said calmly, though her voice shook. “Loki’s gone, back to be imprisoned on Asgard. You haven’t had a single relapse since we left the Adirondacks. He won’t take over again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you.” She forced him to look at her again. “Coulson would tell you the same thing.”

Clint shoved her away with one swift backhand, something eerily blue in his eyes. “Except he can’t, because he’s _DEAD_.” He collapsed in on himself, shoulders shaking. “Oh god, this is all my fault. If I had just been strong enough to get one message to you, or withhold one detail…”

“Hey,” she said, wanting to remind him, willing him to remember. “Monsters and magic.”

His voice was quiet when he spoke again. “Coulson was the only one to believe in me, when I joined S.H.I.E.L.D.” Natasha nodded; she knew all this, but she let him speak. “I was a kid with a bow and no respect for authority, doing petty crime. Coulson took a chance on me, and even once I was in, he was the only one who put up with me. Hoarding food from the cafeteria, making fire hazard nests in the vents, pissing off Fury in every single op briefing for the first six months…”

“The pop tart incident,” Natasha reminded him, the beginnings of an encouraging smile on her face.

“Yeah, how could I forget the time I almost burned down my own apartment building.” She nodded. “Coulson protected me, the way...”

“The way Barney should have.”

His voice was quiet, barely a passing of breath through his lips. “I should have protected him.” He met her eyes, anguish and something darker clear in his. “I took him away from you too, you know. And Mel, she’s still barely spoken to anyone but him after Bahrain. And Audrey…they were getting serious, Nat.” He took a deep, gulping breath. “Besides me, he was the first person to believe in you too. How can you not blame me for that?”

“You never blamed me for all the things I did in the Room, when I was being controlled,” Natasha said levelly. “Why would I do that to you?”

“He’s still in me, Nat. I don’t know if I’ll ever get him out.”

“You will.”

Clint’s voice twisted into a grotesque imitation of itself. “ _You have heart._ That’s the last thing he said before he took me. He took me because he knew…he knew I cared. He said I would know peace, and I did. I knew what it was to not feel pain anymore, to not feel hurt. And so I told him everything.”

“Not everything,” Natasha said. “Not about Laura, or the kids.”

“Only because he didn’t ask. I would have told him anything. I can’t trust myself, when all it takes is…”

“Monsters and magic,” Natasha reminded him again. “Nothing we were ever trained for.”

“That’s what the world is now, isn’t it?”

“Then we’ll train, and adapt,” she told him. “It’s what we always do.”

His hand gripped hers again, a new kind of tightness, of a man desperately trying to hang on. His eyes were squeezed tight shut, but if they weren’t, Natasha knew she would be seeing that blue light in them again, the kind that haunted her dreams. _I’ll make him kill you. Slowly. Intimately. In every way he knows you fear._ “It’s happening again,” Clint uttered. “It’s him.”

“It’s not him,” Natasha said, pushing aside Loki’s lies. “Fight it, Clint. We’ll get through this. Together.”

* * *

“Tell her not to come.” The room was dark; she could only see his face through the light of the alarm clock, but even that was enough to see the lines of pain and fear written across it.

“No.”

“God damn it, I’m not safe, Natasha!”

“Yes, you are,” she told him. Her hands found his bicep, tugging gently. He was covered in sweat, product of a nightmare he’d woken them both up from. This was her deprogramming all over again: periods of not knowing who or where she was, eating food only to vomit it all up again, hearing nothing but the Madame’s cold voice in her ears, except worse, because she’d never wished it on him in a thousand years. “Look at me,” she commanded. “You haven’t hurt me. You haven’t hurt me.”

His lips twisted into a wry smile, the kind that was nothing like a smile at all. “Since the helicarrier, you mean.”

“It’s been two weeks. You’ve barely slept. You’ve lost weight. You haven’t left this apartment since the funeral.”

“For good reason.”

“Maybe in the beginning,” Natasha conceded. “Not now.”

“I can’t trust myself. And you shouldn’t either. If you want to leave, you should do that.”

She wholly ignored his last statement. “You’re about the only thing in this world I trust.”

Silence stretched for a full minute before he would meet her eyes again, his labored breathing slowly calming. “When did you get so sentimental?” he asked finally.

“Budapest?” Try as she might, Clint didn’t even crack a smile. Natasha drew the mussed covers back up over his legs, his chest. “She’s coming. Try to get some sleep.”

He rolled away from her, making a grumbled noise as he pressed his face into the pillow. Natasha tucked herself around him anyway, arm wrapping around his middle. She knew she had done the right thing when his fingers closed around her wrist, holding on like a lifeline.

Morning sunlight came streaming in through the window what felt like a few seconds later, but Natasha dragged herself out of bed anyway, leaving him be. He was awake, and they both knew it. She busied herself making a pot of coffee because it was long established that he’d actually consume it unlike with most of the meals she cooked, answering a few S.H.I.E.L.D. emails while she waited for it to finish. No missions until Clint was ready, that was what Fury had promised them—no more interested in sending a compromised assassin into the field than they were. How compromised…now that was currently up for debate.

They’d get through this. Natasha has no doubts about that. But doing it without Coulson?

Her stomach squeezed and she shifted in her chair, feeling the sudden chill flow across her skin. She had lost before. Lost so many. Elena, Marina… None had been like this. She was away from the Red Room, and Coulson had been good, pure and simple. He wasn’t supposed to die.

The coffee finished draining into the pot and she filled two mugs, forgoing the perpetually expired creamer in the fridge. Sipping at her own, she brought them both back into the bedroom. “Clint,” she called his name. He didn’t move. “Drink it or it’s going over your head,” she said flatly, setting it on his nightstand. He rose slowly at the threat, huddling up against the headboard and taking the hot mug into both hands. She eyed him until he had finished it.

“Call it off,” he croaked. “Tell her not to come.”

“I won’t do that, Clint.”

“I don’t want her to…”

“See you like this?”

“Get hurt.”

“No one’s going to get hurt, Clint. Except those you keep pushing away,” Natasha told him.

“It’s better than the alternative.”

She walked closer, tilted his chin upwards so that he was forced to look at her. “I’m not trying to throw you under the bus, Barton. You didn’t want to go home, I accepted that. Do you trust that I’m not putting anyone in danger?”

“I…”

“Do you trust me?”

He sighed. “Always, Nat.”

The doorbell rang. “Good. Because she’s here.” Clint made no move to get up, not that she expected him to. Natasha got the door instead, finding the young woman she had invited standing there holding two takeout bags and a dog leash.

“Kate,” Natasha greeted her. The shorter woman embraced her despite the many things she was carrying, and the dog licked Natasha’s fingers.

“How is he?” Kate asked.

“Not great,” Natasha said, feeling no inclination to lie to her.

“I saw the footage,” Kate said. “Thanks for reaching out.” She held up the two bags. “I got Chinese for you, pizza for Lucky, and Clint can have whichever one he feels like.”

“Thank you,” Natasha smiled. “We really appreciate it.”

“Don’t worry about it. How about you, Tasha? Are you doing okay?”

“I’m just focused on helping Clint,” she replied.

Kate’s brown gaze fixed on hers, serious and sympathetic at the same time. “You guys’ll get through this.” The young woman knelt down by Lucky, who was seated now and thumping his tail against the floor enthusiastically. “And you’re going to help with that, right, boy?” She rubbed the dog’s cheeks, letting him lick her face. “Be good for Natasha and Clint.”

“He never is,” Natasha rolled her eyes as Kate returned to her feet.

“Yeah, well. He’s got one eye, what are you gonna do?” the young woman shrugged.

“Train him.”

Kate scoffed. “Good luck with that. Didn’t you try that back in, like, 2008?”

“After he chewed up my favorite jacket?” Natasha raised an eyebrow. “Yes, yes I did.”

“If the great Natasha Romanoff failed, what hope did America or I have?”

“I had Clint feeding him treats behind my back because he looked sad after I scolded him for being naughty,” she sighed. Kate handed her the takeout bags and Lucky’s leash, hugging Natasha one more time before turning to leave.

“Also, tell Clint: _Dog Cops_ ,” she said, pausing to look behind her.

“What?”

“It’s a TV show. He’d like it.”

Natasha smiled. “I’ll tell him.” With a wave, Kate disappeared down the hallway towards the elevator. She watched her go, then hefted the bags and pushed the apartment door back open with her foot. She kept a firm hold on Lucky until the door was closed again behind her and the bags were on the kitchen counter, then unclipped his leash with a firm, “Stay.”

Lucky sat down, obedient, but his head was still pointed toward the bedroom and his tail thrashed excitedly. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all know you have a favorite,” Natasha said, walking in that direction. She stopped moving as soon as Clint came into view through the open doorway, still in bed but at least wearing a different shirt than he had slept in, this one fitted and dark gray and hopefully more recently washed.

Looking back at Lucky, Natasha heard Clint ask, “She still here?” Making eye contact with the dog, she bent and hit her thighs with her palms, silent permission to ‘come here.’ Lucky sprang upwards and sprinted for her, crashing straight past her at first sight of Clint.

“Oooof!” A giant ball of golden fur and slobbery tongue tackled him across the bed, paws scrambling before planting themselves on his shoulders so that Lucky could properly bathe his face, Clint’s limbs flailing underneath his attacker. A strange sound reached Natasha’s ears, and it took her a full few seconds to realize Clint was laughing. Finally managing to push the dog off and return to a somewhat-sitting position, the smile was clear on Clint’s face as Lucky leaped at him, still trying to lick every inch of his favorite person’s skin he could get at. “You did this,” Clint said when he could finally escape Lucky’s roving tongue long enough to speak.

“I told you,” Natasha said. “You won’t go to actual therapy—”

“Like you would either.”

“—you get dog therapy.”

“You know, that’s actually an incentive to _not_ seek proper mental health treatment,” Clint said before being once more distracted by Lucky’s silky ears. “ _Who’s a smiley puppy?_ ”

Natasha smiled at the sight, unable to help herself. “Come on, dumbass,” she said affectionately, jerking her head toward the kitchen. “Kate brought food too.”

“Pizza?”

“If I don’t eat it all before you get here,” Natasha called behind her, hearing a dog-sized _whump_ and then a Clint-sized _whump_ as they both bounded off the bed.

“Save some for Lucky!” Clint whined.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “I’m not feeding him pizza, or that dog is going to have a very short lifespan.” She pulled out the takeout boxes and arranged them on the coffee table as well as the pizza box and container of garlic knots, fishing silverware out of one of Clint’s drawers as Kate’s delivery didn’t have any as part of her campaign to save plastic. Chinese food and pizza wasn’t much of breakfast food, but neither Natasha nor her stomach were particularly picky about what was eaten when. She then filled Lucky’s bowl using a half-empty industrial size bag of dog food Clint kept around the house to keep the dog away from their food at least for a little while. Clint tucked himself onto the couch with a blanket, lifting up one side for her to settle down beside him.

“Thank you,” he told her seriously, once she had sat down. Natasha smiled, then knocked his skull gently with her own. He picked up the remote, pressing the power button for the TV. “So, _Dog Cops_ , she said?”

* * *

“Fury’s calling,” Natasha told him, tossing Clint’s own phone at him. He ducked reflexively, causing it to bounce off his head.

“Ow.”

“You should know by now not to move when I throw something at you,” she teased. “Answer the phone, Barton.” He groaned. “Unless you want him to show up here?”

“God, no.” Clint fumbled with the phone then managed to pick up the call, balancing it on his knee, presumably on speaker. “Barton.”

“Agent Barton. How goes your recovery?”

Clint met her eyes. “It’s…ongoing. Sir.”

“I see.”

“I need more time. I know it’s been three weeks…”

Fury was silent for a minute. “All right. I want daily progress updates from both you and Romanoff from now on, or you’ll find yourself in front of a S.H.I.E.L.D. psych team.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Agent Romanoff?”

Natasha briefly wondered how he’d known she could hear him, then dismissed it. “Yes?”

“ _Daily_.”

“Understood,” she said. Her eyes flicked to Clint once again, wondering how he’d take her next statement. “And sir—our new handler? Have any decisions been made on that front?” Her partner swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing as his fingers clenched around the arms of the chair.

“After talking it over with the Security Council, you will not be assigned a new handler to replace Coulson. It was agreed that no one else had his particular skillset—” Skill set? An abundance of patience, perhaps. “—nor are you the newly inducted agents you once were. With your new duties as Avengers—”

“I did not agree to that, sir,” Clint cut in.

“I think you did when you picked up your bow and flew one of my Quinjets out to New York to follow a WWII war hero into battle without waiting for my orders,” Fury replied. “As I was saying…Avengers matters will be decided according to that protocol and any S.H.I.E.L.D. missions you will handle yourselves and report directly to me. For operational matters, you’ll both effectively be promoted to Level Eight.”

“Ooh, does that mean we get a raise?” Clint asked, though it fell flat compared to his usual snark.

She could almost see Fury’s eye narrowing on the other end of the line. “We can discuss that when you return to work, Agent Barton.” The call ended, Clint’s phone beeping twice before returning to the home screen.

“How do you feel?” Natasha asked him carefully. “About—”

“Nobody could replace him,” Clint said simply, and she nodded in agreement, feeling some modicum of relief.

“I’m not trying to push you, but…when are you thinking about returning?”

“Dunno.”

She cocked her head. “Clint.”

“I don’t know, Nat. When it feels right, I guess.”

“You haven’t had any close calls. You’ve been sleeping again.” She let the corners of her mouth lift. “You’ve been doing good, Clint.”

He crossed his arms. “Yeah, well, _they_ don’t know that.”

“Who?”

“The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents staffing the helicarrier. Wasn’t a month ago I was trying to kill them. I did kill some of them. Not that you or anyone else’d ever tell me how many.”

_Eleven_. “You don’t need to know how many,” Natasha told him. “And everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. has been briefed on what…on the circumstances.”

“Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” he grunted. “I just…I need more time, Natasha.”

“All right,” she allowed. “Then don’t stick around here. You could catalogue every push-pin hole in these four walls by now. Go home. See Laura, and the kids. Stop avoiding them.”

His eyebrows drew together, expression darkening. “You know what I did, Nat. You know who I became. They don’t deserve to be punished for that. They wouldn’t be safe.”

“Bullshit.” Natasha crossed her arms too. “They’re no less safe with you than I am, or Lucky was.” Clint looked around sadly; the dog had been picked up again by Kate’s girlfriend some two days prior. “You’re not unsafe. You got fucked in the head. You recovered. Simple as that. Doesn’t mean you have to do the penance routine to make up for it now.”

“Penance routine?” he asked.

“Punishing yourself by staying here, instead of back to the Farm. Isolating yourself because you’d rather be there but you think you don’t deserve it.” He flinched, and she knew she was right. Her voice lowered to barely above a whisper. “It’s not your fault, Clint. None of it.” She held out her hand. “Come home with me.”

His eyes bored into hers; she could see the guilt and fear swirling around in them. But he took her hand. “…Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any and all feedback appreciated! Much love to you all <3


	45. Chapter 45

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath, Natasha makes a few life decisions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is it. We've reached the end. 
> 
> * _Into the Spider-Verse _voice* All right, people, let's do this one last time...__

_Natasha killed Alya, and together she and the rest of the Avengers transported the students out of there and shut down the Red Room program for good._

Present.

“It’s negative.” Natasha let out a deep breath, the phone pressed to her ear. “There is no relation.”

“And you’re sure?” she asked.

“I had my best lab tech run it twice,” Victoria Hand assured her.

“…Okay. Okay. Thanks, Vic.” She ended the phone call, running her bottom lip between her teeth, then lifted her eyes to meet Clint’s. The tension in the air was thick, palpable; she felt like she was revealing the results of a pregnancy test to him, not that she would ever have use for one.

“No connection,” she told him.

He breathed out heavily, relief etched clear as day on his face. “Good. That’s good. Because of all the messed up things the Red Room has done—”

She raised an eyebrow, lips quirking upward now that the danger had passed. “Cloning me would be the icing on the cake?”

“Exactly.” Barton shook his head. “But I will say, the idea of having a mini Natasha running around underfoot…”

“Don’t,” she warned him. “Don’t even go there.”

“C’mere.” He hold out his arms, and Natasha slipped into them, wrapping her own around his waist, her face pressed into the soft material of his purple sweater. “You sure you don’t want me to stick around?”

“S’okay,” she murmured. “You did your part. Go home, be with Laura and the kids. I’ll join you when cleanup is finished.”

He looked down at her. “I’ll hold you to that.”

Natasha smiled. “I know you will.”

* * *

Natasha sat in the conference room in Stark Tower, the other Avengers minus Clint and Thor—who along with Sif had been recalled back to Asgard—clustered around on her side of the table. The wall-slash-viewscreen across from them showed a collection of four video feeds, three of which had S.H.I.E.L.D. logos somewhere in the background. “Update me on their progress,” she requested of the three.

“Commander?” Fury prompted.

“All twenty-six students are currently within S.H.I.E.L.D. custody,” Hill reported. “They’re currently being evaluated by our best doctors and psychiatrists as to their physical health, mental state, abilities, and academic level. The oldest four have shown themselves to be more problematic than the rest and have given our personnel some trouble, but hopefully they will settle in soon.”

“We are also looking into their histories, as much as we can,” Hand added. “We’re combing through the files you and your team recovered from the facility as well as any birth or adoption records that we have access to in Russia that fit the girls’ time frame. So far, it appears that Naumenka was telling you the truth about their origin—we’ve found no birth parents for them thus far that are missing children. But we’ll keep looking.”

Natasha nodded; she had expected that. “And placement?”

“With the help of Captain Rogers, the World Security Council and the Gang of Eight—as this matter remains highly classified—have agreed to allow S.H.I.E.L.D. to handle placing the children with homes in the United States,” Hill answered. “For their protection and our own, most will be placed within the care of former S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives who are uniquely equipped to handle any… _surprises_. Two of them don’t appear to have a strong grasp of English yet, so we are prepared to place them in households where Russian is the primary language to ease the transition.”

“Excuse me—sorry to butt in on this little Strategic-Homeland-love-fest here—but these girls, will they ever be able to be trusted?”

“What are you implying, Mr. Stark?” Hill asked.

“Just that you’re setting them up for failure. Trying to create non-spies by having them be raised by spies? Not a great plan.”

“Do you have a better solution, Stark?” Fury asked, glaring down at the man from behind one eyepatch.

“Nope. Just pointing it out, is all.”

“They’ll be trusted when they earn it,” Natasha cut in. “Just like I did.” There was silence around the table.

“Moving on,” Clint said from the bottom right quarter of the screen. Unlike the others, his background was a rustic brown, almost too nondescript for Natasha to tell his location until she realized he was just taking the historic S.H.I.E.L.D.-Avengers conference call from the barn. “You were saying, Maria?”

“They’re being placed with experienced agents. Not all of whom were spies, in the case of the younger children who will need less supervision for any latent conditioning or training. As of right now, fourteen have homes lined up once their evaluations are concluded, and we’re still working on the rest.”

Natasha nodded. “Keep me updated.”

“You sure you don’t want to be part of the process?” Hill asked her. “We could use your expertise.”

“You have all the files,” she shook her head. “My involvement would just make things worse.”

Hill dipped her head. “Well, that’s all I have for now. Signing off.” One by one the S.H.I.E.L.D. feeds disappeared, and Barton’s video feed enlarged to fill the screen as the only one left. 

“So. The tower. You two moving in?” Tony asked, leaning back in his chair to rest both of his feet on the expensive wooden conference table.

“I don’t know, Stark, what’s the rent?” Clint asked, smirking.

“No rent, free food, and two thousand megabits-per-second wifi,” the billionaire answered.

“Ask Nat.”

“I did burn our apartment,” Natasha said lightly. She cast a cool glance at Stark. “There’d have to be some ground rules, Tony.”

“Absolutely. On both sides,” he said, appearing excited now. “One: no espionage in the tower. Two—”

“Hey Tony, how clear are your air ducts?” Clint asked.

“Uh…I can honestly say I’ve never checked.”

“You’re going to want to,” Natasha smiled. “Or else you’re going to be doing a lot of vacuuming.”

“Cute that you think I do my own vacuuming,” Tony replied.

“Sorry, you’re going to be _paying_ for a lot of vacuuming,” she corrected herself. “Clint likes to play in the vents.”

“Hold up,” Stark put up a hand. “Did anyone else just hear a cow?”

“A cow?” Steve asked skeptically.

“If there’s a loose, renegade cow in your tower, we might have to rethink moving in due to the lax security,” Natasha deadpanned.

“I’m serious. There it is again.” _Moo_.

“Okay, I did hear it this time,” Bruce admitted.

“Ah, that would be from my end,” Clint said, halfway between apologetic and trying not to laugh.

“And where exactly did you sneak off to as soon as the mission in Russia was done?” Tony asked, suddenly suspicious.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. op. Top secret,” Barton replied. “Above your consultant pay-grade.”

“Right, a top-secret operation. With…cows.”

“It’s a very boring mission,” Clint offered. “Middle of nowhere.”

“That’s why I’m not on it,” Natasha added. She tilted her head so that only Clint would be able to see the wink she gave him. “ _I_ don’t let Fury send me to Buttfuck, Indiana.”

“Well, at least one of you has sense,” Tony said.

“Come on, Tony, farmers are the backbone of our nation,” Steve admonished. Then he shook his head, breaking into a rueful smile. “Sorry. Even I heard it that time.”

“So I’ve got a yes from Capsicle, thanks to rampant gentrification and price gouging in Brooklyn, a yes from Bruce after he saw all my science toys, and a yes from Pointbreak because he doesn’t have anywhere else to stay on Earth,” Stark continued. “Is that a yes from you two as well?”

“Yes, we’ll try it,” Natasha answered for the both of them. “But JARVIS and all other surveillance is deactivated on our floors.”

“But—”

“ _Completely_.”

Tony deflated. “Fine. JARVIS, you hear that?”

“All cameras and microphones have been deactivated on floors eighty-four and eighty-five,” JARVIS’s voice descended from the ceiling. Natasha nodded, knowing she and Clint would make a day of removing or permanently disabling them all later.

“All right, we good?” Tony asked. “Just let me know when you want to move in, I can have some cars sent to your old place. Avengers Tower is open for business.”

* * *

With one more thing to take care of before jetting off to the Barton Farm, Natasha unlocked her old apartment door with a press to the fingerprint sensor, Steve right behind her. “I’m sure he’s fine,” she assured him as she pushed it open. “He had the very best looking after him.”

“Aw, you flatter me,” said the blonde on the other side, gun pointed at her center of mass. Another agent was right beside her, gun also out but pointed at Steve.

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “I was talking about May.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” May said.

“Я здесь для защиты всех ваших кошек. So, can we put the guns away?” Natasha asked with a smile. They holstered them. “Steve, this is Agent Melinda May, otherwise known as—”

“ _No_.”

“—otherwise known as the terror of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Academy of Operations,” Natasha finished.

“It’s nice to meet you, ma’am,” Steve said, holding out his hand. May shook it impassively, looking none too enthused to be meeting Captain America. But of course, that had always been…it had always been Coulson’s thing.

“Barnes is out on the balcony,” May informed her, turning away from Steve and back to Natasha. “You got this from here? If I’m away too long, I’m afraid FitzSimmons and Skye might do some irreparable damage to my Bus.”

“Yeah, we got it from here,” Natasha said. Her voice dropped into something more sincere. “Thanks for coming. And May? You look better.”

May just nodded, her expression unreadable. “Next time you pull me off an op for another op,” the specialist said, “make sure it’s more than just babysitting duty, Romanoff.”

“You’re back in the field?” Natasha asked innocently. May exited without a backwards look, the door shutting hard behind her.

Natasha turned back to Steve with a smile. “And this is Sharon Carter, otherwise known as Agent 13.” She glanced slyly between them. “I need a minute with Barnes. You two…keep each other company.” She moved past Sharon into the kitchen.

“I, uh, knew your aunt,” Steve said from behind her after a long pause, blushing a little.

“Yeah, so did I,” Sharon replied.

Natasha took a deep breath as she crossed to the sliding glass door. The pale white curtain was partially drawn, obscuring her view, but she could still see his outline through the mesh material, standing next to the railing with the lights of the city reflecting dully off his metal arm.

As soon as she stepped outside onto the balcony, the stench of tobacco hit her, momentarily tightening her chest with memories of Ivan, and Alexei, and Dmitri, and Anatoly, and Patya… Taking a studiously normal breath, she tapped him on the back with her pointer finger. “Put that out.”

“Not like I can get lung cancer anymore.”

“No, but others can.” She paused, considering. “Not in this apartment, maybe, but…”

James glanced back at her, then ground the cigarette under his boot.

“Sorry to ruin your bad boy aesthetic,” Natasha offered.

“Don’t be. I could use a little less ‘bad’ right now.”

She smirked. “Couldn’t we all?”

“I…I didn’t even use to smoke in the forties. Most people did, but with Steve’s lungs the way they were…didn’t take a genius to figure out inhaling the stuff didn’t help him breathe.” He stopped again, picking up the dead butt from the ground and turning it over in his fingers. “I think it’s something I picked up as the Soldier. It…makes things clearer, you know?”

“Stimulants,” she said, dismissive. The last hints of his cigarette were fading on the wind now, and she took a deep breath of the cool, fresh air. Or as fresh as it ever got in New York City. “That is probably where you picked it up. Everyone smoked in Russia.” She met his eyes. “All the men.”

He picked up on what she wasn’t saying. “Bad memories?”

“Always.”

“Sorry,” he offered.

“You’ve said it before. I accepted it then,” she reminded him evenly. “Neither of us were in control.” Natasha looked out at the city. “How is it going?”

“Rehabilitation? Poorly.”

“James…”

“There was a reason I didn’t go running back to Steve the moment I was free, and it wasn’t just that he was a trigger that could turn me back into their weapon,” he said. “I don’t think…I’m not sure that the man he wants me to be is there anymore, even if we scrape out the programming. I’m not sure what’s left.”

“Steve just wants you,” Natasha told him. “However it’s packaged. He’s thought you were dead for seventy years.”

“I’m not certain brainwashed part-robot murder assassin is better than being dead.”

Natasha pressed her lips together. “As a former brainwashed murder assassin, I can tell you it gets better, if you let it. Not perfect, but…better.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. turned you into an optimist, Natalia. I never thought I’d see the day.”

“Maybe not just S.H.I.E.L.D.” She put a hand on James’s metal arm, feeling it smooth and cool to the touch. “I’ll keep this apartment around for you, until you feel well enough to go in. There are doctors with labs who can do more for you—and Steve’ll be with you every step of the way.”

“You know what I’ve—you’re probably the only one who knows—the horrible things I’ve done,” James whispered, bowing his head. “I’ve done horrible things.”

“Haven’t we all?” Natasha asked. “Someone once told me, even if it’s too late for us to ever _be_ good, it doesn’t mean we can’t still _do_ good. Good is a choice. And doing good is always was worth something.”

The Winter Soldier drew in a long, shaky breath. “Thanks, Natalia. I’ll work on believing that.”

“That’s all I ask.”

“What about you?” he said, turning to meet her eyes once again. “If you’re lending us the apartment—where will you go? What will you do?”

“You know me, James,” Natasha said, smiling lightly. “Always in the wind.”

“Somehow I don’t think that’s true anymore.”

Natasha didn’t answer, just squeezed his non-metal forearm and went back inside. “I’m headed out,” she informed a much more assured-looking Steve and an amused Sharon. “He’s all yours. See you at the Tower in a couple weeks.”

Once she was outside, Natasha paused, then pulled out her phone as she made her way toward the stairs. She selected the contact, then listened to it ring as she took them two at a time until she reached the roof. “Hey, Kate—haven’t talked to you in a while and I’ve got a couple hours flight,” Natasha said when the young woman answered. “This a good time?”

“‘A while’ being seven months,” Kate said, accusation clear in her tone.

“Yeah, well, there’s some things that have happened that I might need to tell you about.”

“Ya think?” Kate said. “So, what happened?”

“Clint got kidnapped.”

“Again?” There was a muffled sound on the other side of the phone, then: “Hey, America, you owe me twenty bucks!”

“ _Yeah, but was it the mob though?_ ” another voice said, somewhere further away from the phone’s mic.

“Not the mob,” Natasha answered.

Kate snickered, but it faded quickly to be replaced with concern. “Is he okay? Are you okay?”

She considered her answer, rolling her shoulders and waiting for the ever-present dark cloud to settle onto them again, the specter of the Red Room and past deeds and lives taken and enemies made. It came—she doubted it ever wouldn’t—but it was lighter than she had ever felt it, barely a weight at all as the thought of returning to the Farm and the future with the Avengers buoyed her. “Yeah, we’re good, Kate. Everything’s good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Nothing lasts forever. ___
> 
> __Sadly, that is true of this story as well. I first began working on it in 2015, near the end of the golden age of Avengers Tower and Clintasha-centered fanfics. I picked it up again in 2019, and after some revamping finally finished it right before everything went to pandemic hell in 2020. Posting this and all the friends I’ve made through its comments section are what’s gotten me through the last few months, so never doubt that I treasure each and every one of you. Special thanks to Nazezdha321—you are amazing and helped me write this fic (and a ton of others, angst or not) more than you know._ _
> 
> __Until next time. Don’t die out there, okay?_ _
> 
> __(P.S. In related news, there are seven one-shot deleted scenes from this fic, which are being posted as the next work in this series. I can promise Kate, Coulson, more on the arrow necklace, a pre-Bahrain Melinda May, fanon-typical Clint and Natasha shenanigans, and maybe some very injured fruits. The first one’s up now, so I hope you check it out!)_ _


End file.
